There is no true path



I come across a lot of people trying to figure out what their true calling, their true path in life, their mission of which if they found it they could live life with passion and to the full. Happiness incarnate, the secret formula to never having to work again.

 

I can tell you now I have followed Philosophy down the path of nihilism and asked the question of why we don't all commit suicide. Richard Dawkins can tell you we are an accident of evolution while Albert Camus can show you we stay alive out of force of habit more than anything else. Socrates can point out death is nothing to fear and Cicero can show you that life is long if you know how to live it.

 

Aristotle would have us work on the middle ground, not the endless pursuit of financial gain, neither a monkish life of abstinence and poverty. Socrates believed instead of the body beautiful, we should dedicate ourselves to improving our souls.

 

Well let me just say, after 40 years on this spinning planet, there is no absolute true path, there is no one passion, one all consuming thing that we must follow to the end of days. Am I the same person as when I was born? How about my thirteenth birthday? eighteen, twenty one, thirty?

 

The only thing I have absolutely retained from childhood is a love of reading. Fantasy fiction was my thing, now my tastes have changed and evolved and over the years I have encountered a wide range of interests.

 

No doubt my tastes, my pursuits, my aims and ambitions will change again over the next forty years. What I do know is, there is no true path other than the path you decide for yourself. Careers advisers, parents, friends, money, status, all will have an influence on the path you take, but the only true path in life is the one you give yourself, the one where you look in the mirror and you are happy with your choices.

 

Some will pursue financial gain, others to be a great parent or partner. Others will commit themselves to their art and live on subsistence wages. Some will devote themselves to helping others, while some will lie, cheat and steal their way through life.

 

The only person you are morally accountable to is the person you see in the mirror and if you can look yourself in the eye and honestly be proud of the path you have chosen, then you know you are on the right path and nothing anyone says should matter to you.