Nowadays there’s navigation in every device you conveniently keep in your back pocket. Directions providing spoken guidance every mile, reassurance each turn, and approximate time of final arrival. While en route to your final destination there’s no hesitation and no untracked unfamiliarity. Simply the quickest course traced right in front of you.
Shit there’s traffic? Allow for a reroute because we’re all racehorses running on bets. Cops parked under the underpass? Wait for the expectant heads up a mile prior. Years of advanced technology now detail the easiest route to “success”. And even as children the scripted encouragement of following our dreams are structured.
You see the reason for copious amounts of insecure failure is because we’re all lost trying to find our final destination without the regimental convenience. Where’s the direction when you’re nineteen years old? Even so, where’s the final destination millions of us ask. Is our final destination even good enough? No one has the convenient navigation to find love, to follow dreams, or how to find who you are.
From a young age my road was as clear and straight as could be. Sunny roads, empty highways, and directional signs convincing my innocuous self of the seemingly magnetic journey ahead. Told I could be whoever I wanted, driving was the easy part as I pursued a buffet of alternative fates.
However, the more birthdays passed, the more halting forks in the road stopped me. They urged me to choose instantly because I’d fail falling behind if I delayed. My mental wheels then traced left, right, and backward, doubting where I belong, how to love myself, and the best ways to succeed all too quickly. Metaphorical forks in the road felt like knives in my heart, stabbing me as I unknowingly made too many left turns down the wrong path.
At a loss of uniformed directions, and fed up with the city lights that blinded my vision, I felt trapped in society’s demands. Needing to distance myself from such a regimental structure of success, I took the untracked path alone. A direction that felt like running to empty lands, driving along muddy mountains, and snowboarding fresh powder leaving me feeling limitless. Free from the pressure of future successes, relieved of the relentless voices telling me to seek out my unmapped dreams too soon; too young.
The dirt roads, the powder flooded mountains, and the absence of traced direction brought me success. Casually, mapping love within myself, uncovering new destinies outside of our organized design, and reaching my dreams instead of worldly success. Despite my novice opinion, I’ve realized maps lead to unfulfilling prosperity, and one foreign journey uncovered a future of individuality and adrenaline filled adventures keeping me alive instead of living to win. My life lacks a final destination because the untracked roads are infinitely more explorable than those crowded with others regretting their 9-5.