The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

December 29Path Awareness

May I be active as a spirit of love, / Since thou hast taken me from that path which Nature / Seemed to appoint, O, deign to open another, / Where I may walk with thought and hope assured; / … Had I but faith like that which fired Novalis, / I too could bear that the heart “fall in ashes,” / While the freed spirit rises from beneath them, / With heavenward-look, and Phœnix-plumes upsoaring!

Margaret Fuller—Life Without and Life Within (1859)

How do you know if you are on or have been taken from the path that “nature seemed to appoint,” as Fuller poses? Have you ever stopped to consider that seemingly big concept?

Are you on the path you were meant to be on?

What sign would you need to know? What role does faith play in your belief? Does it even matter?

If, as many of the writers in this work suggest, we all have our fate to chase, isn't this kind of a big, stressful deal?

Maybe, but maybe not.

We can get far too hung up on thinking of our path as some specific physical calling. What if it is a path that leads to our ability to find happiness in whatever we decide to do? Sure, there may be things each of us are more suited to do with our skills and interests, but how we handle the obstacles no matter is the key to “walk with thought and hope assured.”

Consider this thought from Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle Is the Way:

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition. ...