It seems that to find the real path we have to go off the path we are now on, even for an instant, and earn the privilege of losing our way.

It was the idea of a “pathless path,” something I found in David Whyte’s book The Three Marriages. To Whyte, a pathless path is a paradox: “we cannot even see it is there, and we do not recognize it.”⁠1 To me, the pathless path was a mantra to reassure myself I would be okay. After spending the first 32 years of my life always having a plan, this k

But desire lines may also be evidence of something more than pure practicality. The casual disobedience of a desire path as an alternative to the formally prescribed walkway is remarkable simply as a human choice, willfully out of step with the way things are.