What a Fool I Have Been

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Nothing to lose. Everything to see.

That was how I started.

A flower in my hand, a dog at my side, and the confidence that only fools possess. The road was bright. The mountains were distant. Every horizon looked like a promise.

Then the gate appeared.

The path was open.

I walked through without asking where it led.

A skull asked me where I was going.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

It was the first honest thing I had said all day.

Along the road came pleasures dressed as gifts. They smiled and offered cups overflowing with everything I thought I wanted. I reached for them more than once.

Power arrived next.

Respect.

Success.

A man in a fine suit spread the treasures of the world across a desk and told me they could all be mine.

“At what cost?” I asked.

I already knew the answer.

Then came saints and angels, teachers and prophets, each pointing in a different direction.

“Follow me.”

But every road that belonged to somebody else seemed to lead farther from myself.

So I wandered.

And because I was a fool, I fell.

Many times.

Into mistakes.

Into pride.

Into certainty.

Into confusion.

Into the strange gravity of my own opinions.

“Whoops,” became a prayer.

Each time I hit the ground, something invisible whispered:

“Get up. Keep going.”

The greatest lesson was not hidden in heaven or hell.

It stood between two doors.

Fear.

Love.

Every step is a choice.

Not once.

Not twice.

Every day.

Every conversation.

Every thought.

Every act of kindness.

Every act of selfishness.

The fool does not arrive at wisdom by being clever.

The fool arrives there by surviving his own foolishness.

Eventually I understood something.

The leap is unavoidable.

There is no safe bridge across existence.

The bridge is made of risk itself.

Trust the leap.

Years passed.

Campfires burned low.

Friends came and went.

Dreams appeared and dissolved like sparks rising into the night.

And sitting beneath the stars, with my old companion sleeping beside me, I finally understood:

The journey is the home.

There was never a destination waiting at the end.

Only the road teaching me how to walk.

Now, looking back across all the mistakes, all the wrong turns, all the embarrassing certainties and magnificent failures, I can only laugh.

What a fool I have been.

What a beautiful trip.