There’s a lonely road known as independence. It only has a few glittering green signs on the side of the path that say, yes. This is the way. Its traveler is a warrior. She knows when to unfold the road map and seek comfort in its lines.

There’s a straight road with no speed limit called pressure that revs the engine when the driver doesn’t want to. The car never stops. It’s being pushed by an invisible, uncontrollable stress creature. It’s known as the easy road, but it’s really the road that, once begun, becomes unavoidable.

There’s a dark road that isn’t traveled much because no one seems to know what’s lurking around the corner, what’s sleeping in the trees. Its signs along the trail are silent behind overgrown grass and sad graffiti. This is the road of uncertainty, and many travelers never get to see the hidden hills or the colored sky at the end of its shadows. There is too much fear in the beginning.

The final road we know is chaos. It winds and breaks and the concrete crumbles beneath your tires. Sometimes they tear. They tear the rubber and they tear you too, because they know nothing other than a path of pure destruction—pure meaning complete, not clean or holy or beautiful. But sometimes the traveler needs pure destruction to reach just that: purity. Sometimes our engine must fail and our brakes must screech before the entire car can be scooped up like a fallen, baby bird and made new again.

Whether you’re the bird with a broken wing or the bird flying high above the trees, every path is traveled. Every road must be explored to reach more roads, more gateways and nooks of the earth that are both bright and dull. This is the intricate system of veins running through us, the journey of life. There is steepness and danger but a whole world to be discovered along the way.