paradoxical desire paths

Every week, on Friday mornings, I walk to work. It’s the one day I am trusted with the keys of the cafe I work at, and I get to unlock the doors and do everything my own way for two hours. It’s a thirty-two minute walk if the sun is out, twenty-four if it’s a bit too windy for comfort, and a twenty minute bus ride if anything else. It’s a path so engraved in my mind, even if only taken once a week. I’m convinced I could walk it with my eyes closed.

At first it’s all sidewalk and crosswalks, but then a hidden turn right, and the grass takes over. I greet every tree like an old friend, grateful for the quiet they offer before a day of small talk and stupid questions.

I am always in a solivagant state when walking this shortcut, suddenly wandering alone, vulnerable in my solitude, and basking in the pride of finding it. My own secret route.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I made the right turn last Friday, and I was face-to-back with another person. Naturally, I was furious.

He’s trespassing! This is my desire path! I found it first!

Wait--

Did I?

I can’t remember the first time I walked to work; I started this job when I was sixteen-- I am now nineteen. It definitely started with finding the fastest way to work, my biggest worry at the time being late. But, somewhere along the line, intention yielded to instinct. Somewhere along the line, it stopped being something planned, but instead something I discovered.

I believed it was worn into the earth only by my own repetition, albeit walking it once a week never crossed my mind. It was shaped just by natural need, just from simply taking a faster route. Nothing of importance, but something human: the urge to skip the red lights, to follow the sun, to avoid a puddle, to explore a hidden path.

I was living in blissful ignorance, and now I was forced to not only stare at this man's back, but to also come to terms with him being there. For all I know, he could’ve been the first one to step foot here, forcing the grass to adapt to his needs.

The imprint of my sole no longer carried the desire of the path-- instead the dirt held it in its purpose, and I became lost in the sea of endless shapes. No matter how much I believed it to be mine, it wouldn’t be able to distinguish the weight of my walk apart from the others, even if I could ask.

It felt absurd, being betrayed by a shortcut. But beneath the annoyance was a quieter grief-- for the illusion of authorship.

So, what choices are truly our own? Is the path ours, or simply one we found ourselves upon? Is it an unintentional path of intentional desire, or an intentional path of unintentional desire? One begins with longing and stumbles its way forward; the other begins with motion and discovers the longing retroactively. We either chase what we think we want, only to find ourselves elsewhere-- or walk without aim until the ache reveals itself.

Desire, then, becomes a kind of unreliable narrator. It whispers convincingly, but it is never neutral. How can it be, when even our most urgent cravings-- love, ambition, escape-- might have been planted there by others? Freud might call this the unconscious-- the realm of latent wishes. Jung would speak of archetypes we carry unknowingly. Sartre would insist that we invent ourselves through choice, but what happens when choice is shaped before we can name it?

Trusting desire means risking illusion. Trusting method risks missing the truth entirely. To follow what feels right might be to surrender to forces we don’t understand. To distrust it might be to sever ourselves from something essential. And so we are torn: between instinct and analysis, between heart and map.

Maybe we are never truly alone in our choices. Maybe solitude only reveals the chorus we’ve internalized. But even if every step is inherited, there is still something in the way we walk that belongs to us. The path may not be ours-- but the manner of moving through it, the rhythm of our solitude-- that may be the only original thing.

Our clearest desires might be shaped by unconscious forces, and even the most meandering paths can be the truest expressions of who we are.

I was late for work that day, thirty-two minutes turning into fifty. I unlocked the doors slower, I poured the first coffee a little stronger.