Finding Your Desire Path
In the forest, across the plains, desire paths are worn through the undergrowth. This is where the animals go, following their instincts, wearing their grooves into the earth. Their way. The best way. Their nature.
The paths of their intrinsic selves.
Desire paths are the easiest, most direct routes to their destination. That’s not to say that it takes no effort to forge these routes. But there is no map-making involved. No logic. No judgement. No planning. The animals are simply aligned with their purpose and their identity, and their path is forged from this wordless authenticity.
There are desire paths everywhere we go, and it isn’t hard to find them. In the hedgerow you can see the gaps in the bushes made by the animals as they come and go. In the woods you can see where the foliage has been worn away by the deer as they seek out the best food and cover. In society you can see where people have stepped off the pavement to cut across the green, wearing down the grass underfoot. Nature – our nature – will always seek out a better way through the world.
Easy. Simple. Direct. These are the paths of purpose.
On Manhattan Island, before the skyscrapers took over, the native Americans followed the desire paths of the animals, until the route became so well-worn and so well-known that it became a familiar trading route for humans. And, despite the efforts of the developers and the investors, the builders and the legislators, who sought to make New York City a uniform grid, this desire path still asserts itself as Broadway, cutting across the man-made uniformity of city blocks running east to west, north to south.
In Europe the Camino de Santiago spreads out across the continent like the roots of a tree. Each year the pilgrims walk these well-worn routes as they make their way from their homes, wherever they might be, to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. Sometimes, along the way, they find themselves. They find a purpose. Or they find a new perspective, a new connection with their place in this world.
We are animals. But somewhere on our journey we have whipped up a storm and lost ourselves in the chaos. The gales and the hurricanes pick up the leaves and the sand, until the sky is dark with the detritus of lost connection with our nature. Payslips whip past. Printer cartridges. Tax returns. Credit agreements. Exam results. KPIs and SEO. Our to-do lists wrap around us like boa constrictors, until we can no longer breathe. And the sky gets darker. What will we wear to the office tomorrow? What will my boss think of my proposal? How many likes will my Instagram post get? Where did I leave my keys? Why am I such a disappointment? Why can’t I get ahead?
Somewhere out there, beyond the maelstrom, beyond the chaos, beyond the social anxiety and the fear of failure, is our desire path. Our intrinsic way. Our Tao. But in all the confusion we’ve forgotten it even exists. In the deafening sound of the storm, we have lost any notion that there is anything but the storm. The din has become all that we know. We can’t tell which way is up. We’ve forgotten what our own faces look like. The chaos rules, dividing us from ourselves and our true place in this universe.
From time to time, when we allow the daydreams a moment to visit, we glimpse our path, but the moment we reach for it, the chaos returns and it becomes obscured. From time to time we take a breath, we let the noise subside and listen to the sound of the trees, and looking down at our feet our path reveals itself, beckoning us into the distance. But as soon as we grasp for it, run for it, try to step foot on it, the maelstrom of leaves and dirt and paper jams and bank balances whips up before our eyes, blinding us to the way.
Let go.
Japanese artists of the Zen tradition paint a circle with their brush before they commence a new piece of work. Painted in a single motion, with a whip of the wrist, this freeing action liberates their arms from their thinking mind, and allows them the freedom to paint without the constraints of consciousness. The circle, known as an ensō, is about letting go, and once they let go the art they create is pure, authentic, and from a deeper, more meaningful place. The ensō is freeing. It is an act of release from what is not us, to reveal what is us. The ensō is a moment of enlightenment in which true connection to ourselves and our purpose is obtained.
The maelstrom that whips up the dirt, the wind that picks up the leaves and obscures our path, is not from ‘out there’. It is from ‘in here’. We create it ourselves. We are the storm that prevents us from realising our purpose and walking our path. Our worries. Our fears. Our overthinking. Our anxieties. All internal. All created by us. All obscuring our path. Our Tao.
But when we draw our ensō, when we let go and allow the storm to settle, when we allow the leaves to come to rest rest, and we allow the air to clear, our path reveals itself. We must free ourselves from all that is not natural. We must extricate ourselves from all that is not intrinsically us. We must find out who we really are.
And then our desire path will reveal itself clearly, as the only way through the trees. And we can let it carry us away.