Footsteps

Everyone knows that beautiful poem about the footsteps in the sand.  There is only one set during the most troubling times of that person's life.  And it turns out those were the times that Jesus did NOT walk by his side, but carried him.

Nice sentiment.

I have learned this week that everyone needs to walk their own path.  That I can be there to help someone with their journey, but that everyone is ultimately responsible for their own journey.

I cannot make everything better for everyone.  I cannot help those who do not wish to help themselves. 

I cannot carry you along your path.  (And I cannot force you to come down mine.)

It's a liberating sentiment for me.  That I do not need to take personal responsibility for every sadness I see, that I do not have to right every wrong, save the world and bring about a burst of universal consciousness that will have us all loving one another as brothers and sisters in a united world of peace and love and...

Brothers and sisters fight like cats and dogs.

I'm a tough person to please.  I not only want you to like me.  I want you to like everyone.  And everyone to like everyone back.  I want us to live in balance and harmony with one another, custodians of a peaceful eden on earth, where where there is enough food and water to go around, there is no poverty or war or injustice, where we are solving the problems of disease together, where everyone has dignity and purpose.

So if I seem a little frantic at times, now you can see why.

I do not think too much.  It is a gift. 

I do not care too much.  It is my legacy.

I started my own journey running confidently alone, sure in purpose, with no need for anyone besides me.  I tripped a few times along the way.  I staggered bleeding through dark times. 

And now I am slower, a peddler in old shoes, with fraying baggage, no longer a child sprinting barefoot through flowered meadows, confident of the rainbow at the end of my path.

As a peddler I am learning to see others, on their own paths, and to let them be.

Do I still want universal harmony, universal consciousness, the eden on earth, paradise, lasting salvation?

Damn straight I do.

But I can only follow my own path to find it.

As I sat in the park this week, a profound feeling of my own insignificance finally hit me.  Not that I have to struggle to help everyone else to see the light, but that I am such a small piece of the puzzle that there is nothing I can do for anyone.  Except myself.

This would all be extremely profound if it wasn't already stated in the Tao thousands of years ago.

So that I am still a peddler on a journey.  But a peddler who has laid down some of her baggage.

And some of yours.

Namaste.