walking your path, one step at a time

we often want to rush ahead to the end of the story
to know what happens, to be certain it all works out.
to dream up the ideal job and race toward it.
to find the perfect partner and close the book on happily ever after.
to hold onto friends so tightly they never drift away.

we are wired to seek safety
to find the ending,
to believe that certainty will make us secure.
but life does not work like this.

when we fixate on the entire staircase
on the whole journey at once
when we hold in our minds
some perfect place we need to reach
to feel happy, successful, free
we forget the most important thing:
the journey itself.

breaking it down
focusing only on the step you’re standing on,
and then the one just ahead
releases the pressure.
it lets you see the beauty right here,
not only what’s waiting beyond.

this is hard to do.
we long to see the full journey,
to picture the whole staircase,
to cling to it as a kind of safety.
but often, this is just an illusion
a way to quiet our fears, the uncertainty.

life is uncertain.
you may plan for it to go one way
and find it turns out completely differently
sometimes worse than you’d hoped,
sometimes better than you could have imagined.

we don’t have as much control over the future as we’d like to believe.
we don’t know what will happen. but we do know this:
we have the present.

that truth is often hard to accept.
but if you begin to live it
to stop grasping for the end
and instead tend to this very moment
things can shift.

it means focusing on how you’re moving now,
not on how you hope to appear at the finish.
it means showing up for the life you’re already living
not the relationship you think you need,
not the career you believe will bring happiness.

it means showing up each day,
consistently, patiently,
trusting that these small steps
will become the whole.

break your goals into pieces
you can actually hold,
instead of wishing for some great arrival
without doing the quiet, daily work.

we long to know the ending
so we can avoid the work
the steady, often unglamorous effort
that actually creates what we want.
we want a shortcut.
we want to skip ahead.
but this is not how we shape our future.

we build it step by step
in the humble rhythm of daily habits,
by showing up.
and as we do,
we find a quiet happiness in the moment itself
free from the hunger for what we lack.

of course, dream.
set goals.
know where you’d like to go.
but don’t make them the price of your happiness.
break it down.
live day by day, hour by hour.
have a plan, but release the pressure.
just live.

these small, almost invisible steps
are carrying you forward
slowly, surely, beautifully
to where you are meant to be.