all roads

all roads are one road.

this is because they're all connected. if you have a road that's not connected to any other roads, it's not a road. it's just... well, a bit of pavement, really.

i got lost after work the other day. the black strip of asphalt i was following led right under the highway and curved away into a place i'd never been.

i just kept going.

when all roads are one road there are ultimately only two directions. forward and backward.

of course all that's relative. and life has unnumbered destinations. where you want to be going depends on where you want to be at the end.

and figuring out what you want is the hardest part. after that it's just following the road.

provided you have a map of which road is the right road to take you there. how do you know?

well, how do you know anything?

ultimately you just have to try it and see for yourself. you don't have to follow the map at all.

maybe there's more than one way. your $4.99 atlas shows you one way. your thousand-dollar gps system shows you another. the old guy in the house by the postoffice rattles off yet another. in roads like ours, that fork and bend and break and sprawl, there is more than one way to go forward.

you can make all the left turns in a maze and that'll get you... well, really it will just show you the very left edge of it and eventually you will get to the hole in the end. the way out. might not be the easiest way out. might not be shortest. you might have to retrace a lot of steps.

all right turns will get you to the same end.

there are a lot of metaphors i could make here about maps and guides and following. i don't feel like making them.

i got lost on the way home the other day and remembered that my dad always used to tell us 'all roads are one road.'

so i followed it, around its gentle, empty curves and gravelly bits. i turned left once just for fun. i used the water towers to guess where i would end up.

all roads are one road. i got home eventually. now i know where that one bit of road goes.