Wayfarer, there is no road.

I disagree with most of what God is doing while he’s doing it.

The plan was never for me to know the plan. And that feels like death sometimes.

Anxiety sneaks in like a snake, slowly devouring us whole while we squirm and writhe. It ain’t easy.

We walk through life trying to figure it out along the way, or occasionally giving up on that notion fairly quickly, which might be the right call, but sadly, most of our giving up comes in the form of drugs or fantasy, and that’s definitely not helpful either.

Ayn Rand famously said:

“You can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.”

Amen to that.

So what does the good kind of “giving up” look like? Some would call it surrender.

The problem with surrender is that you can’t easily ask a man (or any human) to lay down their defenses without giving them a proper replacement. We can’t be expected to just wander around naked and helpless, can we? We need a shield of some sort. The world is a dangerous place, after all.

So we create our own shields, which are never worth much at all, but they do provide some form of comfort, not unlike a teddy bear. Totally useless against any real threat, but snuggly nonetheless.

We know what our shields are. The cardboard things we make as kids. We know what is written on them.

Unfortunately, we grow out of them, and they end up tattered and worn like the blankies of our youth.

No, what we need now is a real shield. Not a manufactured thing of iron or wood, but a shield of another world. One of truth and peace and reassurance.

Of course, this mythic shield doesn’t exist in any real, physical sense.

But it’s the only one we are offered.

Which brings me back to the subtitle of this post.

I disagree with most of what God is doing while he’s doing it.

We do end up walking around naked and helpless in the real world, clinging to this imaginary shield of faith. And that sucks. It feels scary and dark and stupid.

In one sense, we hope it’s true, but at the same time, it seems so silly, doesn’t it?

There’s another quote I think of often in times like this, from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

“Wayfarer, there is no road.”

Woof, how about that for your Tuesday morning.

I believe in the concept that people know truth when they hear it, and when they hear that quote, they generally sit back in their chairs and simply accept it to be true.

We know it’s true. We know there is no road. Not for the wayfarer, anyway.

And that’s the only real way to be in my opinion. Who wants to follow the path clearly cut? Who wants to walk the road more traveled by?

Some do, I suppose.

But also, I doubt it. I doubt anyone really wants that journey. But they choose it.

And I don’t blame them. Not for one second. The other way is nearly impossible. Impassible, you might say.

But, for better or worse, I’m on it.

Here’s to the wayfarers. You are not alone.