The path is made through walking

Excerpt from Dao of Complexity

Wanderer, the road is your footstep, nothing else;
Wanderer, there is no path, you lay down a path in walking.
In walking you lay down a path and when turning around
You see the road you’ll never step on again.
Wanderer, path there is none, only tracks on the ocean foam. Antonio Machado

Peter Allen used to unsettle people back in the day by asserting that there is more than one future. I am not quite sure why people found this so upsetting other than it is another recognition of the limits to determinism. He was suggesting that, whilst the past constrains and shapes the future, the future is nevertheless not fixed, not an open-ended flat terrain where anything is possible, but a terrain that is shaped along the way by what we and others choose.

In other words, the future is co-created by everything we, collectively and reflexively, intend, value and put into action. Daoists say that ‘the path is made through walking’.

I particularly like the notion that ‘the path is made through walking’. First, I join a path that has been made through the walking others have done before me. Second, I don’t make the path alone – I am affected by the ‘footsteps’ of others around me. Third, the future path will follow on from where we have got to, and the future trajectory will be constrained by the path already taken, and yet is still open to possibilities. Fourth, something unexpected might happen – a boulder arrives out of the blue which destroys part of the path and changes the game. The point is, that there is no certain path already laid down that we can merely follow.