When a new path splits from the one we’re currently on, do we take it?
Desire path
– A footpath made through foliage, grass etc. by repeated traffic rather than laid out by design.
In the middle of the De la Costa Hall,and the Social Sciences Building at the northern part of the Ateneo de Manila campus is a grass field where students usually walk through when entering or exiting the campus through Gate 3.
Many students would sit or walk around it talking to themselves as they reviewed for Theology and Philosophy oral exams usually held in one of the cramped consultation rooms in De la Costa.
One day as I was walking by De la Costa towards Gate 3, I noticed a long straight path cutting through the field where the grass looked to have disappeared. It formed a hypotenuse to the cement that surrounded the right-angled corners of the field.
It was the desire path—the path of least resistance as Roman Mars would call it. Although there were paved tracks for people to walk through the middle of the field, these were ignored by most.
I continued walking along the sides of the field, thinking of how irresponsible and lazy we were as students for ignoring the pavements the school admin clearly wanted us to follow. But about a week later, I walked through the same route and the grassless trail was still there, only this time, one of the school’s maintenance staff was patching it up with pre-grown grass.
After some time, the patches of grass grew into the soil and became part of the field. It was good as new, so I thought.
Soon enough, not surprisingly, a fresh new trail began to form over the new patches of grass. Desire path – 2, Designed path – 0.
The same thoughts went over my mind. Lazy, irresponsible, disobedient…
Until I saw this:
In MSU, there were no permanent pathways to begin with. The students made their own trails and the school simply paved over those. In this case, the school listened to the students. Desire inspired design.
Looking back, it wasn’t just the students not “listening” to the school admin. The school had failed to listen to its students as well.
When this happens, which listens to which? There is no hard and fast rule.
The same goes for the paths we take in our own lives. Do our ambitions reflect our deepest desires? And on the flip-side, does internal and external reality match our personal goals and plans? And if the answer to these questions is no, we go back to the same question: Do we listen to desire or do we stick with our design?
When a new path splits from the one we’re currently on, do we take it?
There’s always going to be a negotiation between the two. Discernment lives in the compromise between them. Maybe we can carve a new path right in the middle, but will settling for indecision do us any good? I doubt.
And so we have to decide, but before we do, we have to listen. But listen to which one? Not to the one that screams at us. Definitely not to the one that sounds easier.
But to the one that makes our hearts sing along to its whisper. Even if it’s not part of “the plan,” even it is against what we’re comfortable with, we have to listen.
It won’t be easy—it usually never is. But it’s only by choosing a path that we can stand tall, walk straight, and feel alive.