CONSIDER THE MIDDLE PATH.

If you stood at the beginning of a journey that you were about to undertake, and you were told of three roads you could travel that would all definitely take you to the destination you wanted to arrive at, and each of the three ways were described in the following manner. The first road is through the mountain ranges, deep valleys, sheer sided mountain cliffs, constant rock falls and a narrow treacherous trail. The second road is along the foothills of the ranges, easy rolling ridges to cross, shady trees covering the well defined road and an abundance of streams flowing with crystal clear water to be easily crossed. The third road heads out away from the mountains into the desert, nothing but sand, heat, dry winds and no water, plus a road that often completely disappears due to the constantly changing landscape, making it easy to loose your way.

With these choices to make, which of the roads do you think you would choose? I would suggest that most of us would elect to journey the second road along the foothills of the mountains, in another term, the middle path. Yet, every minute, hour, day and week we see many of us choose the more difficult roads to continue our life journey, making choices which cause us and others to suffer such things as fear, loss, jealousy, anger and many other feelings and emotions that either immediately or eventually mean will have a rather unhappy life.

Taking into account that there are many situations which arise in our lives that we believe we have no direct choice about, how do we make the right decision about the road to travel? It is a huge question, and the first thing to keep in mind is that we will never be able to make the right choice every time. It is impossible. Does this mean we should not bother to try? Absolutely not, because we have within us the power to make choices and we have a free will to journey our life road in our own way. There is always going to be some cost no matter which decision we make. However, if we choose to look more often for the good, or at the very least, some benefit that can come out of our adversity, we are using our common sense, and we are also using our desire for harmony in our life and an ability to believe we can stay in control of our life and all these attributes help us to look for potential dangers and conversely benefits we can create for ourselves, our loved ones and the whole of the world.

Remember that our life is not about the destination, it is only about the quality of the journey we make to bring us there, for we already know that the final destination of our earthly travels will see us leave this world. What we do not know is what will be the quality and substance of the life journey we choose to help us arrive at this place. Whether you decide to believe or not to believe that you have a choice in which path you choose can only be left up to you to decide. However, please be assured that for very much of your life journey you are able to make free choices and if most of these choices are to always follow the middle path, you will create a life which for the most part is filled with love, happiness, satisfaction and achievement and most of all a sense of a valuable life well lived.