What Lies Ahead on the Path of Life is Never Completely Clear

“As with a heavy fog on a road, what lies ahead on the path of life is never completely clear, but the choices we make can help shape out the shadows” Bryson Staley Years ago when I was a little girl we lived in Long Beach, CA. My mother worked at a nightclub as a bartender. One night (about 2:00 AM) when she got off work, the fog was really bad. The police were on the radio asking people to stay home, and not drive in the fog. My mother thought she could make it home. When she started driving it was worse than she thought, and she couldn’t even tell where the road was. She saw taillights in front of her and thought that if she just followed them she would stay on the road, and she could make it home. After driving for a while and making some turns, the car in front of her stopped. The man driving got out of his car, and walked back to my mom’s car and knocked on the drivers side window. “lady” he said, “you are in my garage.” Needless to say, he helped her park her car and called a taxi for her. It is a funny story, but there is a life lesson for us in this story. We are all trying to find our way home. Home is where our purpose is, deep inside of us. It can feel like we are peering through deep, dense, fog and can see nothing that looks like our purpose. So we tell ourselves that we don’t know how to find our way home. We think that what we need, is to find an expert to show us the way home. The problem that can arise when we are trying to find home, is that we abdicate the process to someone else. We follow them to their home. It could be a spiritual leader or guru. It could be our parents, spouse or someone else that we really look up to. But even with the best intentions on their part, their home is not our home. It is like the singer or writer, who starts out copying someone else that they look up to and admire. We may become proficient but there is something in the sound of our own voice, in that our soul sings through us. When we are copying someone else, the image isn’t clear, it becomes pixelated, a poor copy. When we find our own voice, it makes all the difference. That is when the star is born. When we wander in the fog lost, it is not necessarily a bad thing. We can learn a lot about ourselves as we wander. We will have adventures, learn new things, make new friends. We will also have some losses and misadventures. But at the end of the journey, if we persevere, we will find our way home. Things like maps, road signs, a GPS can be helpful.. But we must take the time to learn to read and use them correctly. We need to make sure that we are taking the time to listen to our heart. It sends out signals. It gives us directions. We can ask for help, but we don’t want to follow others to their home. I think that what has helped me the most in my own personal journey the last few years, is that I have attended a lot of workshops/seminars. I have hired coaches to help me learn what I couldn’t figure out by myself. What a good coach does, is hold up the mirror to face me, and ask me really good questions to help me see what I am blind to. They give me food for thought, so I can determine for myself if this or that answer makes more sense. They are like fog lights on the car. Have you ever used them? Driving headlights reflect off the fog and create glare, so that you can’t see. Fog lights have a unique beam shape and they cut through the fog so that you can see. There are times in our lives when we operate from driving headlights and just create a glare that we can’t see past. We need a coach or someone in our lives that are like the fog lights, they can see what we can’t and help us to see it for ourselves. “Beyond the fog lies clarity” – Anonymous