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The road ahead lies open like a book.
The sacred map is our guide
Across the static land;
Our wants, our needs, our plans,
Our desire to travel to the end,
Spread before us wide and bold.
An invitation to live life to the full.
Brave new world.

If only we knew, we say,
But with a map we do.
And we can go anywhere.
We have the choice
Of unbounded vistas.
Endless possibilities.
And then we stay at home.
Living our mundane lives
In ever diminishing circles
And circlets. Ringlets.
Hanging from the head of life.
Each strand a line upon the map,
Creating the web of our potential.
Unused.

If only we had the guts to get going
And not to take the same old path,
Or even worse, the road backward.

Forward we must go. Ever forward.
Braving the charted stretches.
One more set of feet upon a way
Already made weary by countless generations -
And those who followed them
To dusty ignominy and obscurity.

But!
A pause.
A thought.
A map is two dimensional.
Real life is not.
There is so much more.
There is up and down,
Contours, mountains,
Valleys, seas.
The imponderable.
And most importantly,
Spirit.
The desire to get up and go,
To achieve,
To drive
To fly
To go beyond
To reach out for the stars.

And then I smile.
There are maps for those too!

© Richard Strong, November 2008