How to Use a Guidebook

Sometimes we truly need them. We don’t want to get lost. We don’t want to miss out. We don’t want to waste time doing the wrong thing. Guidebooks can be a helpful compilation, but we err when we rely on them for all things.

How many walk on the trail through the woods just because someone told them that was the way to go? How many stay in the shallow pool because they saw it in a picture, and that’s enough? And how many believe in the words and the words alone—forever staying on a path that looks the same with every step?

There are dangers in the wild, to be sure. Off the path, away from the carriage, exist beasts that could outrun us; they know the way. And yet, listen close enough and that wild space has a hum of sweetness. It exists despite the guidebook, a place beyond the known.

There, maybe the hum gets louder, its rhythm forming a wordless Yes.

There, maybe you’ll find the sun beneath dappled canopies or dip feet in a cooling stream. There, maybe roots start growing between your toes and twigs sprout buds from your nails. Catching the wind, your hair builds its wings and you fly.

Guidebooks have truth but never all of it. Only a blank page will tell you: You’re a wild space too.