The Same Step

--I wrote this a few weeks ago but didn't know how to finish it, so didn't post. I like it though, so up it goes finished or not.

I wonder how many more times I am going to take this particular step on my journey. I've been here so often it's starting to feel like home. At least, that's how I'm perceiving it at this juncture.

Is it a case of having to let go of romance all together? That seems to be a step in the lives of many of our prophets and messiahs. I'm certainly not on their level of awareness, but if that's where we're all destined to end up should I just take that step? Or is that cheating? Avoiding the lesson, rather than learning what I need to know. Doing something because someone else did, rather than because I feel it to be my path, my dharma... That doesn't feel like truth to me.

It feels more like I simply keep taking this one particular path. I've been on it before, I wind up at this particular point. Should I be surprised?

Except that isn't taking enough ownership. I am not just the traveller, I am the path itself. This time around, after the actions were over and done with I could actually see them as distinct choices to come to this precipice. As if I saw a break in the foliage, leading somewhere else, to other paths, and not only didn't take them but fled them in fear. My programming at work but also my will.

Which leaves me with a moral dilemma/question. I recognize that these decisions affect others than myself, and accept responsibility. I am sorry for subjecting others to my self-destructive behaviors, especially when I know better. But if I am both path and traveller, are they not both as well? What part of their larger path is this? They've been here, or at least someplace similar, before...