Life's Geodesic

Geodesic
The shortest distance between two points on a surface

Why do we go out of our way in pursuit of all these ideals that come our way? Why do we put so much effort into hacking, slashing and feeling our way down an entangled, blocked, hostile path, when another awaits, clear and bright and easy, just next door?

So many goals, so many things to aim for, so many aspirations. And following that, so many lost causes, so many disappointments, so much sorrow.

What justifies this sheer labour? This teeth-gritting, relentless hold on all these hopes, all these duties, all these work?

What is it that we are working for anyway? Are we labouring under the will of God, or our own insistence? Is He there ahead, saying "Keep going, I will deliver you" or is He standing back at the sunlit road that we left, saying "Come back after you have exhausted yourself, when you lie broken, in final comprehension that you belong not there but here. And I will walk with you once more"?

Perhaps there is a path through the thick forests of life. One that we can walk, slowly by suredly. A path along which we can look at the hanging carrots of life - money, love, fame; good results, social popularity and Cambridge - and despite not having achieved them, still find peace.

How do we find this path? Perhaps it is just there, the simplest, most natural one. The direction in which we can put one foot on the smooth grass ahead of the other, instead of beating our shoulders against a stone barrier and shedding tears of impotence.

Perhaps this is life in its truest splendour - to turn away from the many unreachable temptations and look instead for that wooden staff, upon the hand of the gentle Shepherd beckoning towards the Geodesic of Life.