Only a Few Find It

This week I’ve been thinking about the road that leads to life.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction… But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

The narrow road has a few defining features.

First, it’s narrow—so you won’t find many people there. No crowds. No confirmation bias. If you’re waiting for consensus, you’ve probably missed the turn.

Second, it’s built from almost offensively simple ingredients: love, patience, and delayed gratification. Nothing flashy. Nothing optimized for speed. Just practices that compound quietly over time.

Third, there will be solitude. We tend to fear loneliness, but solitude isn’t the same thing. Solitude is chosen. It’s spacious. It’s where clarity shows up unannounced.

It makes me think of traffic jams—how easily we follow the mass of cars, assuming the crowd must know something we don’t. Meanwhile, the small openings, the side roads, the overlooked exits quietly keep moving.

Maybe the people worth noticing aren’t the loud ones, but the ones who live simply and do interesting, original things without asking for attention.

Wendell Berry wrote:

“I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.”

You won’t find the rarest wildflowers stuck in traffic with everyone trying to get to the same place.

You probably won’t find anyone smiling there either.

Namaste,

Ashton