SKYE stephenson

I recently travelled to Japan, where I had lived four decades earlier. Japan is, of course, a place where they speak a different language and use a different writing system than the English that is my mother tongue. Somehow, when I lived in Japan full time, I got around without a map, or understanding the writing, or being able to full decipher menus and train station signs. And I never got lost.

This time, there were more signs in English, and most everything was downloadable as an app. Which, And somehow, I got more lost this time.

This brings up the concept of ‘finding our way,’ which can be understood at various levels. The most straight forward is finding our way in the physical world, from point A to point B.

Maps, and nowadays apps, can be very helpful in helping us find our physical way.

But finding our physical way is only one kind of finding our way. There is also finding our way through life. What direction do we want to take? What choices will we make? How will we connect with others around us, including the landscape that supports us?

For this kind of ‘finding the way’ – maps and apps are not that helpful. Perhaps there is an app or two that may give us a hint or clue to what choice to make, but they are never the main ways we discover our way. How we discover our way is by the steps we take day by day. And each and every step carves out a unique path as no one ever has before, or ever will again.

One of my favorite quotes (and I am not sure who to attribute to) is this one: “Traveler: there is no path, you make the path by walking it.”

Thus, we create our own way, in our own way, throughout our life.

And then beyond ‘our way” in the individual and personal sense, is ‘the Way.’ Is there such a thing?

So many of the issues and situations we are dealing with collectively as humans right now is around different people and different groups claiming to know or have the answer about what the real way is…which of course, means their way. This is going on politically, economically, and religiously all around us.

But there can we another way to approach this possibility of a great Way beyond ‘our way.’ It is one I find very meaningful and profound. And it is from the East Asian spiritual tradition. From Taoism.

The word Tao, in fact, means The Way or the Road.  And the Chinese ideogram for Tao shows a stylized picture of a foot above a flat surface.

But in Tao, what is meant by the Way is beyond name and form. Beyond understanding and description. Ever changing yet the same. It is something that cannot be told in words. That exists and does not. It is something beyond even the void.

And sometimes, if we are lucky, as we making our way as best as we can in our lives, we may sense or glimpse or perceive for the slightest of milliseconds a hint of that Way.  

Published in the Monadnock Shopper Sept. 13-19, 2023