The Path Is Long, But It Is Beautiful

You may know the myth of Theseus, who slew the Minotaur at the center of a labyrinth. Before he entered, Ariadne gave him a ball of thread to tie at the entrance. As Theseus moved through the maze, he unwound the thread behind him. He then killed the Minotaur and followed the thread back out, retracing his steps in the dark.

We often imagine life as a series of Minotaurs to slay: losing weight, earning that promotion, getting into the right school. What we don’t expect is that, whatever we achieve in life, we will still get lost. We will lose the meaning, lose the plot. And the only guidance for our hearts is a very slender thread: love.

As a child, I was obsessed with drawing maps. I think it was my response to instability, a way to believe I wouldn’t get lost, even if the adults around me were. When I got older, I avoided anything that seemed overly complicated: passionate love affairs, messy emotions. I became a Buddhist and tried to walk a straight path.

Instead, the Buddha’s teachings showed me that the true path is never straight or predictable. There is no escape from illusion. To understand your illusions, you have to test everything for yourself to see whether it is illusory. You have to enter the labyrinth of your own heart and lose your way as corridors shift, all while holding to the thread of love.

What does this mean? It means that when your mind wanders in meditation, how you return it matters more than how long it strayed. It means that in moments of anger, you refuse to wish others harm. In moments of disappointing yourself, you refuse to abandon yourself.

The true path is long, because after every insight, you still have to walk further in the dark. But as your eyes adjust and your fingers grow sure of the thread, you start to see that the path is also beautiful, and that getting lost was never something to fear.

Painting by Kevin Hoertig