# The Path of the World There is a path that winds through the world—not marked on any map, yet it exists. It is the path we all walk, knowingly or unknowingly, from the moment we draw our first breath until the last. This path does not run straight. It curves and doubles back on itself. Sometimes it climbs steeply, leaving us breathless; sometimes it descends into valleys where the light grows dim. Yet we continue, because the alternative—to stand still—is itself a kind of movement, a slow sinking into the earth. The peculiar thing about this path is that no one walks it alone, though each of us walks it in solitude. We pass others on the way. Some we recognize; some remain strangers whose faces we glimpse only in passing. We exchange glances, sometimes words, and then the path divides again and we go our separate directions. Yet in those brief moments of meeting, something is exchanged—a warmth, a recognition, or perhaps just the knowledge that another soul treads this difficult ground as we do. The world does not make the path easier. It places obstacles before us: grief, confusion, loss, the weight of years, the burden of choices made and unmade. The path itself grows narrower as we age, as if the world is slowly closing in. But something strange happens too—we grow lighter, or perhaps we simply learn to carry our burdens differently, the way a river learns to flow around the stones. There is no destination at the end of this path, or rather, the destination is the path itself. To walk it with open eyes, with compassion for the other travelers, with some measure of grace—this is the only arrival that matters. The world's path teaches us this slowly, through time and through living. Those who listen hear its lesson. Those who do not—they too walk it, but they do not hear the music that plays beneath every footstep.

You will never fully comprehend the true face of this world until your parents are no longer alive. If you imagine that the angelic souls surrounding you will stand beside you like angels themselves after your parents pass, placing their hands on your head to console you, then I tell you, brother, you have only watched the trailer to the film called life. The whole picture is still ahead.

Yes, I grant you, one or two people—those who were good to begin with—will remain good. But only those one or two. Two plus one makes three at most, nothing more. Only after your parents die will you understand who the villain was in that film called life, and who was merely playing a supporting role all this while. Yes, but you—you will remain the central character, just as before. That much is certain.

All right, another thing: your lover or spouse will also reveal a face to you at that time, one you perhaps never saw before. Partners are generally seen treating well during such times, but the opposite too can happen. They may behave as though nothing has occurred, their conduct suggesting: *People die anyway, why all this sentimentality?*

Now to relatives and kinfolk. Within three days of your parents' death, you will see relatives you may have never laid eyes on before. Most of them come seeking some advantage or gain. Some will weep over your dead father or mother by name so convincingly that you'll feel *you* are not the orphan—*they* are. Some will cry and cry until they actually faint! Then who will console you? Instead, you'll have to go and console them. Yet some of these very relatives never once inquired after your parents while they lived; worse, they mistreated them on various occasions. Their tears carry a different meaning. As days pass, you'll gradually understand why these relatives arrived at lightning speed from the far corners of the country after all this time!

Now to your parents themselves.

If your mother dies while your father is still living, one of the following scenarios is likely to unfold. Yes, exceptions exist, but exceptions are exceptions.

1. There may be complications over the property and land she leaves behind. He will have to manage them.

2. From the moment of his wife's death, various people will urge him to remarry, though the poor man perhaps never imagined such a thing. I won't judge whether remarrying after a wife's death is good or bad—I speak only of how others behave.

3. At his wife's sudden death, he may be too bewildered to know what to do, and thus becomes numb.

4. Looking at you and your siblings, he forgets everything else in the world. He remains consumed with your care and upbringing.

5. Those who deeply loved their first wife often remarry a second time out of fear of bearing the burden of memory alone—something society views differently. Some remarry to give their children a mother. Others, terrified of old age and solitude, take another spouse, while still others cannot even conceive of such a thing.

And typically, when the father dies while the mother lives, the following occurs:

# On Mothers

1. If a mother is young, or if family pressure bears down, she may marry again. Yet even now, our society behaves like an infant when it comes to understanding the solitude of a widowed woman—or acknowledging that such a woman has needs, both of the heart and of the body!

In any case, if she does marry, she either brings her children with her, or she ensures their welfare is secured before taking that step. Of course, in most cases, mothers don’t remarry at all.

2. After a father’s death, it is the mother who bears the storm of disputes over land and property. So many men spend their lives creating worldly turmoil over ancestral fields—not out of necessity, but out of compulsion, as though it were an addiction.

3. She too is bewildered by her husband’s passing, yet she does not grow indifferent. A mother has scarcely three days even to grieve. You will see: the very day your father dies, your mother will turn to you and ask, “Have you eaten, son?”

4. She forgets everything else and builds a new life looking toward you. Don’t imagine she does this in the hope that you will care for her in the future; rather, she does it because to be a mother is to look—to keep looking from the moment you become one. Mothers sleep with their eyes and hearts open for their children; it is only at the moment of death that they close their eyes at last.

I have not here compared the love of fathers and mothers, nor any other emotion between them. Neither father nor mother loves their child less. To rank one above the other seems to me both foolish and unjust. We must remember this: the emotions of women and men, and the ways they express them, are never the same. Here I have only tried to draw a truthful picture.