“You have permission to stray, not to get lost” is the best translation I can offer. On the Chemin de Compostelle, signs with short messages were peppered along the way and I found this one to be of particular interest.
While walking, my thoughts strayed. And on the trail I met a women recently retired who confessed she wasn't sure why she set out in the first place. Sometimes I almost strayed off the trail because I didn't pay enough attention to the blazes and another traveler added an extra hour of walking because she missed a blaze all together.
We stray. The potential benefits are real if unquantifiable. I found inspiration when I followed my thoughts wherever they took me. Perhaps the retired woman found an unexpected purpose for setting out. I became more observant to avoid loosing my path. And the lady who missed the blaze decided she needed to go home.
The potential to stray is the potential to wander and come back to ourselves with a little more information and perhaps with a greater capacity to avoid truly losing ourselves. Perhaps this is at the core of transitions. The crummy messy middle is a call to stray just enough so we don't get lost; so we don't simply repeat changes but rather become more powerful in our capacity to discern what comes next.
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