The Path We Trace

I was walking home late last night, and for some reason, I started counting my steps. It’s a silly habit I picked up as a child, trying to keep my feet perfectly aligned with the cracks in the sidewalk. I realized then that we spend so much of our lives trying to find symmetry in places where it rarely exists. We want our days to balance out, to have a beginning that mirrors the end, and a middle that holds everything together neatly. But life is usually messy and uneven. We stumble, we veer off course, and we rarely end up exactly where we started. Yet, there is something deeply comforting about the idea of a path that loops back on itself, or a journey that creates its own shape in the dark. It makes me wonder if we are all just drawing lines in the air, hoping that someone else might see the pattern we are trying to leave behind. What shape does your own journey take when you aren’t looking?

Hugo Baptista has captured this beautiful image titled Double Helix. It feels like a perfect, glowing map of a path I wish I could walk myself. Does this light remind you of a place you have been?