How hard could it be to walk away from something and never look back?
I'll tell you. Imagine sitting down at a table. You haven't eaten in what feels like years and someone places your favorite food in front of you. However, there is a catch. The last time you ate this food it made you violently ill. But it's still your favorite food. You still want to eat it and feel the joy that it once offered you. You take that bite and you quickly remember that it made you ill because you are allergic to it. Your main source of happiness, your joy and comfort has now become a poison to your body. You can no longer eat this food without suffering extremely painful consequences. Consequences that are often too much to handle. But, but, the sweet feeling of that food coming to your mouth, the sweet wonderful smell filling your nostrils, the saliva coming and awaiting the treasure. What happened? All you find is pain. You wonder what went wrong. You wonder what you could have done. You look back confused. You want to make amends. You want that food back in your life. How could you live without it?
We, along with many other things, were not designed to forget easily. A tree trunk does not forget the knife that carved letters into it. A car engine does not forget its constant need to be nourished. A damaged heart does not heal quickly. Memories live on, requirements still need to be met, and scars take time. Somethings will never go away, while some will lose themselves. A beaten path does not quickly lose itself.
I like the beaten path the best for this. The beaten path is there because someone found it useful. The path offered a way to an end. It wasn't necessarily the best path, it wasn't perfect, but that path was good enough for someone. That path was forged by those who walked it. Once a path has been deemed useless, the brush starts to grow back around it, the weeds come and cover what it once was. And so it is with saying goodbye. It is not that the path is no longer there, it is not that the hikers are no longer there. It is that the path is no longer useful. It is that the hikers decided to take a different route. It is that the hiker might have had to go home. It happens. It is life.
