There are ways to get lost.

There are ways to find a job, fall head over heels, hurt yourself, and ways to approach a beehive. And they go untaught. There is no formula for success that doesn’t hinge on luck and circumstance. Yet once you’ve found that job, that lady, the honey, the world fits you better (once you’ve moved in with the lady the bathroom even shines brighter). Once the story’s told the prestige loses its marvelous luster. The world swings back to normalcy, as you deem fit, selah. Yet every moment leading to the spark that fired your conflagration of self was a bitter shuck at flint and tinder, a second in the darkness that proved a minute, and God forbid an hour, was long enough to freeze. So remember, it is very easy to scare yourself into the wild.

What do we have back home in society? Roads, condos, fiat currency, and my personal favorite, plumbing. Once you’ve struck the light that brings you in the wilderness melts away to reveal the job your interview garnered, the apartment your mate approves of, all at the end of a conveniently-located bus stop or tube. And any troubles that meet you on the way can be truncated by the phrase, “This is my stop. This is where I get off.”

But why is it sometimes more difficult to say so - to end when you are sure of a beginning, to leave a job you have enjoyed and poured your sweat into for a more lucrative, or conveniently-located, position? Before you approached light from darkness unsure how long it might take. Now you are exchanging fires for one that burns brighter, and longer. And how do you leave the ones who helped you bring that warmth to bare?

For some that is no challenge. For others, whether it is a relationship that must conclude before it consumes, a habit that has proven itself detrimental, or a two-week notice handed to the nicest employer this side of Kansas, these choices are paltry simplicities on paper and astonishingly difficult to enact.

If you keep the focus of your life on the journey forward it may be no less wrenching to step away at your proper corner, but the reconciliation is bearable. What makes these decisions difficult is the crowd of passengers we ride along with. Look at the big picture. Once the conversation has begun it is understood to be limited. On the way, no one would consider you rude to stand up and say, “This is my stop. This is where I get off.”

In life we are driven to moments. Those around us, who have meant so much to us, live in those moments with us. Yet it is imperative to take the wheel when our corner rolls into view, to choose to know the future for what it is, progress, and the past for what it was, the journey home.

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