Hiking on the North East Coast of Aruba is one of my favorite things to do. On Saturday morning as I am hiking a couple of mountain bikers passed me. One of them said \u201cyou are far away?\u201d \u201cI thought, am I far away?\u201d I thought I had only hiked for a little bit and was just arriving at the coastline. I thought I was maybe 20 minutes away from my car.<\/p>\n
As I continued my hike I wondered about the mountain biker\u2019s comment. Am I far away, meaning far from civilization? Or did he mean I was not paying attention? While I continued to wonder, I started wandering further. I passed the coastline, watched the ocean roughly splashing, picking up a piece of driftwood here and there.<\/p>\n
I greeted some tourists passing by on a horseback-riding tour and decided it is time to climb back up the mountain to return to my parked car. Well I thought so, but when the horses passed me, I thought to myself, that is odd, normally they don\u2019t take this route. But I was enjoying myself and continued my hike up the mountain.<\/p>\n
Quite some time later I began to see beautiful homes, but no car. This is not where I am supposed to be! I didn\u2019t recognize the road anymore. I was definitely lost. I tried to find some short-cuts but with the cacti and their prickly pins, it really wasn\u2019t an option, so I decided to hike back on the same road as I came, which took me an extra hour.<\/p>\n
Back at the coastline I realized how far off the track I actually was. I must have been so involved in my thoughts that I didn\u2019t notice that I hiked much farther South than I normally do. The mountain biker probably meant I was far away in my mind and I took a wrong path. But was it a wrong path? I actually discovered new hiking trails that I can explore in the future, saw beautiful horses, and had a great relaxing mindless morning.<\/p>\n
The spiritual teacher Ram Dass says: If you have 5 paths and don\u2019t know which one to take, try all 5 of them. In life, we don\u2019t know which path leads us to our right life, but all paths lead to something. Sometimes we take a path and we think that\u2019s the way to go, so we continue to take it. But when we take the same road every time, we are likely to get the same results in our life.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t take that wrong path consciously, but the experience gave me more wisdom and opportunities.<\/p>\n
If you find yourself on a different road, surprised by the traffic or donkeys that you see, just observe mindfully. It might be time for you to have a new experience! Trust that we all find the right path at the right moment and this gives us the freedom to explore. I love explorations and I\u2019m glad I have 4 more paths to go!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hiking on the North East Coast of Aruba is one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geasouge.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}