As long as I am standing in the dark, I have an excuse to not walk the path because I cannot see it. But once the light breaks, I have to decide to walk or not. And I question whether I am strong enough to walk it.

Over the past three years I have been consciously searching for my path — my Work. At first, I would feel lost and confused. I was stumbling around in the pitch black night with no stars or moon or even shadows to guide me. Sometimes I would stand frozen and scared that I would end up in a “pit of despair” — or maybe I would merely trip in a hole and sprain my spiritual ankle — or worse that I would be walking away from, rather than toward, whatever I should be doing with my life. Sometimes, I still feel this way.

Now I am learning and growing and stepping out into the light. And guess what, I still can’t see my path as clearly as I thought I should be able to. There are no shiny roads with a giant sign that says “This way, Angela!” There are trails in the woods and suggestions of overgrown footpaths in the meadows and weed-choked sidewalks in the city. I sniff. I explore. I test out one and then another. I get excited about sometime, and I follow it for a while. I find myself seeing the trees, the birds, the people I pass on the street differently, more fully. I sing to myself out loud.

But…I still wonder from time to time if I am truly doing my Great Work, or merely passing the time with vain, self-indulgent pursuits. I don’t know if I will ever be able to answer this question in the moment. Not because I cannot look back and see the impact I have made in the world and other people’s lives, but because saying definitively that I am on THIS path, MY path, is scary. To say that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing — which is just living as authentically as I can in the moment and letting that guide me — means that I take responsibility for my actions in the world and in myself. Scary and necessary.

And sometimes, that’s almost enough to make me want that dark room as an excuse again. It may have been miserable, but it was familiar. And there is a comfort in familiarity.

But that’s not the path I choose to walk.