Recently, the following quote appeared on my Facebook feed –

While likely not ever said by Albert Einstein, it nonetheless got me thinking.

My first thought was that it’s a pretty scary looking picture with the grey mist, the old bridge and that crow waiting for you to try and pass.  And that is sometimes how it feels when you break off from the crowd and are all alone. Scary. And lonely. And dangerous.

So much of my life feels like a break from the crowd. Or at least from what they tell you you need to be and do in order to be part of the crowd. I’ve never been married. I don’t have kids. I’m not interested in climbing my way up the corporate ladder (and working 60 hours a week). I don’t want a house. I’m not thin. I don’t have cable. Or a TV. I probably haven’t seen the latest episode of, well, anything. And, I don’t much care about the big game. So sometimes it’s lonely and scary and I feel like I’m not doing it right.

But then my next thought was how awesome it is to be out here on my own traveling through my own landscape. I’m living MY life and not the “supposed to” life constructed in my head from too much advertising and not enough self-worth. And the more I inhabit this space, far from the maddening crowd, the happier I am and the easier it is to make decisions about my life and my path. Even the hard decisions are becoming easy to make if still somewhat harder to implement.

Not that I’m becoming a hermit, although I am sometimes tempted to escape to the woods to a cabin all by myself. It’s just that making my decisions about my path without worrying about what everyone else is doing (or thinking) means that I really am going places that I’ve never been before.

So here I am crossing the bridge and heading into the misty unknown.  And finding it pretty damn exciting.

(side note – have you ever noticed the large number of internet quotes attributed to Albert Einstein?!)