NEO Magazine Issue 3 | Page 52

icing on the cake. While I remained in that no-space, something truly incredible was happening. Forming in front of me were two distinct paths. I didn’t know it at the time but they were there and taking shape silently. And it was the path less traveled that beckoned and eventually brought me back to life. The first path was full of fear. It overflowed with statistics, numbers and comparisons. It left me feeling like a deer in the headlights. I was reduced to a tiny, compressed little digit devoid of identity, lost in a storm of ‘shoulds,’ ‘musts,’ and ‘have to.’ This path took pieces of my soul and chewed it up demanding that I stop questioning and just blindly succumb. ‘Give all your power away and you might survive’ was the overhead banner in flashing neon lights. Though it was scary, this path seemed the obvious choice. Big, bold and bright! It certainly was the popular one. Everyone else was doing it. Heck, most people probably never gave it a second thought. They seem to jump in with both feet, and sometimes so terrified, that they needed to keep their eyes squeezed shut… all the way down. And while it made total sense to head off on this shiny, bricked road, there was something inside me that lingered on a second option, far off to the left, under the brambles, tucked away, nearl