A labyrinth as a metaphor for life

Labyrinth of the Chartres Cathedral in France

Peter is a small man in his mid-60’s, with round shoulders and a closely cropped crown of white hair. He has a gentle, kind face with warm eyes that glow like the blue honey of the Mediterranean. Wearing a plaid shirt, buttoned to the neck and tucked into khaki cargo pants, with a beige sun hat, he looks like the grandfather who spends months planning a family fishing trip, but then it pours rain. 

Except he doesn’t have children. Or a wife. Peter lives alone with a small, sickly dog. He still works, caring for adults with disabilities in his community. 

Peter lives a few kilometers from where I’m staying this summer in Newfoundland. 

On a flat plot of land beside his one-room cabin, he built a labyrinth. More accurately, he constructed a replica of the 1,000 year old 11-point labyrinth that’s etched on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral in France. 

Friday night, we were invited to his inaugural summer solstice labyrinth party.

We arrived just after 8pm. The sun was sinking over the ocean in the west, soft golden light shimmering off the water like a million stars. Peter was walking his labyrinth in bare feet as his only guests, three elderly women, were leaving. His face lit up as we walked down the drive. He hurried over to hand us booklets from a huge stack he had printed out for the occasion. And began to breathlessly explain the event. 

*

Sometimes I catch myself in the sticky belief that life should be a smooth spiral of ceaseless progression as I move toward my true self. A seamless story of becoming. Defined by grace and characterized by conviction. 

And the undulations of uncertainty, the stumbling moments, the slowness, are all warning signs. 

But here’s what I know: life isn’t a paved path to the center. At least it doesn’t feel that way. Rather, it’s full of potholes and plot holes. Holding the map upside down, then sideways, then putting it away entirely. Many little detours. Some big ones. 

Long years of working and waiting and hoping. Feeling lost, but going ahead anyway. Wondering if it’ll all amount to anything. If the dots will connect. If my life will be a story you’d want to tell.

Life isn’t a clear path.

Life, really, is like a labyrinth.

*

I walked through the entrance, taking slow steps, looking back over my shoulder to see Peter watching intently, standing proud beside his creation like Da Vinci with The Mona Lisa. 

Through my walk, I thought about love, life, and fate. I asked myself questions that may never be answered. I set aside cynicism, suspended judgment. Shooed away the intruding thoughts that buzzed like wasps: This is stupid. How much longer? Can’t I just speed up? 

But, through it all, I thought of how the path of the labyrinth is a metaphor for the journey of life. 

Unlike a maze, a labyrinth is not meant to mislead. There are no false routes, impasses, or dead ends. A labyrinth is a single path that twists and turns and weaves, in seemingly random ways, but eventually leads to the center. It is not a mindless trick but an ordered track. Although the traveler cannot see it, there’s a clear and consistent pattern. There’s a symmetry at play. A plan in place. 

Often, walking felt boring, tedious. I wanted to hurry up. Obsessed with “doing it right,” I wanted to go straight to the end. I forgot that the whole point of the labyrinth was the experience of walking itself. I forgot it was asking me to be invested in discovery, rather than achieving an outcome. 

The path was more about how I walked and who I became, than where I traveled and when I finished. 

At moments, with the tight corners and mesmerizing pattern of stones, I thought I was lost or somehow screwed up. I was convinced I would never make it to the middle. But I had to keep walking. I didn’t know where I would go, where the path would take me, but I knew how to put one foot in front of the other. I knew my job was to stay on the path, trust it. Really, trust myself. 

Even if I feel lost, I can’t be lost. The path will bring me to the center, if I keep going. 

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I was brought back near the entrance. Almost to where I started. I stopped dead in my tracks, hit with this tidal sense of recurrence. This frustrating feeling of circling myself. All my effort, all my earnestness, all my work. Only to be right back where I was before. No further ahead.

Except I wasn’t back in the same spot. Not exactly. I was in a slightly different place. It took me a lot of walking, just to be a few inches to the right. But maybe that’s how it works.

And after a few more steps and two more turns, I was there. In the middle of the labyrinth. At the big rock in the center. 

I had arrived. 

Alone.

As I sat on the rock, staring out to the deep blue sea, as the sun melted like liquid gold over the rippling waves and dark green spruce stood like soldiers in the distance, I took a guttural exhale. 

The moment of arrival was beautiful and calm and everything I wanted it to be. 

But, it was also over. The soul-satiating journey through the maze. The feeling lost and uncertain. The experience of finding my way.

There was no more. No re-do’s. No experiencing things twice.

It was all just… over. 

*

The labyrinth whispers: you are right where you need to be. If the path ahead was clear, it would probably be someone else’s. From here, take one simple step. The one that’s obvious, close in… You can’t get lost. You can only stop going forward. 

I took one last look and stood up. Left the labyrinth, walked to meet Peter at his garden gate, and we went inside for tea and treats. 

Best party I’d been to all year.

Off to build,

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👋 what i’ve been up to:

• I’ve spent my first full week living in a 12’x9’ canvas tent at an off-grid property in Newfoundland, a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean. The days have been long and slow and good.

• Some projects: sawing logs to create an enclosure for an outdoor shower, welcoming a family of four Scottish-blackface sheep to the pasture, building stone pathways, creating a foundation for a deck, planting apple trees, digging holes for gooseberry bushes, fishing for cod, editing a book on philosophy.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

American writer Joseph Campbell on the hero path:

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known. 

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. 

And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

📸 photos i took: