The Path

Every time I go to London on the train, I see the path.

I've been travelling this route for sixteen years now, give or take, and the path is haunting me. Summer and winter it cuts up across the hillside, on the diagonal and into the woods. Then just beyond at the end of the hill is a large open building looking out across the valley.

I've finally looked this structure up and it's called the Dashwood Mausoleum, reputed meeting-place of the Hellfire Club, so I kind of knew of it after all. It's not the building that interests me though, it's the path itself.

Sometimes there are walkers on the path, sometimes it just stretches upwards towards the tree line, beckoning. Every time I pass it, I feel that I'm passing by a different life, a life where I am walking up to the woods. I dream about this path, about treading its short green turf, about turning back at the edge of the shadows to see the train going past in the dip of the valley.

We talked about that today. About the forks in the road, the labyrinth of probability and its infinite possibilities. If he hadn't caught that bus, if I hadn't accepted that job.....we wouldn't be here now. But where would we be instead, and would it really be that different? He thought maybe yes, I thought maybe not.

So he misses the bus, and he doesn't meet the girl who became his wife. He meets a different girl on a different night, another clever girl, studying hard like him. He gets qualified, she gets qualified. They get married, have some children, he travels on the train into work at the bank, the minstry, the firm.

I don't take the job, I go for something different. Do I stay married to the kind, brotherly friend from university? Or do I still leave him for someone who seems like a bold and different choice but ultimately turns out to be - unsuitable? How many of the choices we make are predicted by our nature? And what is the balance between chance and choice? I think we might still end up where we are.

If two people were in the same place at the same time, let's say at the same parties at university, or working round the corner from one another for years, or travelling in from the same part of town - were they always meant to meet, or never supposed to? And if they do, is it fate or random meaningless chance?

I don't think any of the choices I've made would have led me to a life where I was walking up a grassy path on a work day, watching the train go by at the bottom of the hill. I wouldn't see an appeal in that life until I'd already lived this one. Maybe it's not my parallel existence, maybe it's my future?

One day soon I am going to take the 0649 not in my suit and heels but in my walking boots. I'm going to get off at High Wycombe, walk back down the line to the start of the path and stride up to the top of the hill, through the trees and out to the clear grass in front of the building. I'm going to have a cup of tea from my flask and watch the trains go by.

Life doesn't change until you make different choices, I guess.