Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I bought a book from Amazon called "The Afterlife of Stars." It's about a family that escapes the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The Revolution — sparked by Hungarian youth, writers, and activists — occurred in response to oppression by Soviet rule.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm enjoying it so far. I haven't read a book for fun since the summer, and even then it was a book I had read several times.

The aforementioned quote prefaced the first few pages. It had a page entirely to itself.

I like quotes. I'm basic in that way.

But I don't like them because I like being the hero — whipping out an inspirational quote for every difficult situation in my life, or using one to comfort others in difficult times. I like them because they sometimes point to ideas I've considered but never thought to put into a meaningful phrase. Perhaps, I'm not that good of a writer.

It's difficult to take a concept that makes sense in your mind and turn it into art — a saying on a page for others to enjoy and understand.

So I stared at this quote for a while — thinking right well that I should understand it before embarking on the first chapter of the book — and I realized how interesting it was.

It has meanings that I would like to explore.

First, perhaps it's telling us to not be so hard on ourselves — that even if we make all the right decisions, the timing could be wrong. The wind could blow in the wrong direction and we could get steered off course. The road is walking too: it could beat us in the race we're running.

This idea sparks a question, though. What is this road? Is it our life in general? Perhaps, this quote is pointing to the inevitability of our lives changing from beneath us. Maybe, we have no control over parts of it.

Alternatively, maybe the road represents time — or at least, some aspect of time. We may simply arrive in the wrong place at the wrong time, an obstacle may get in our way, another person or event may delay us, as we too want to make the most of the time we've been given.

That said, I guess it could be a mixture of the two — the order of things. Maybe the road is simply the part we have no control over. The part that's not us. The variable.

To another point, perhaps this quote is telling us to remain humble — that we can be running as fast as our legs will allow but the road beneath us could be moving faster in the opposite direction, in which case we're actually moving backwards.

We shouldn't ever be too proud and we should recognize our success but never gloat.

Alternatively, it is also a warning. Beware, it says. The road we're walking offers no mercy. Like us, it is trying to progress. It is turning and weaving in all directions and so we can't assume that just because we're going in the right direction that the road will compliment us. It could be hazardous and rocky.

Whatever the intended meaning, I think it serves as an accurate starting point. It teaches us that we can't control the "road" — whatever that may be. And that we shouldn't try to, because sometimes, it will outdo us. Slowly but surely, it walks as we walk.

Similarly, perhaps it is telling us to accept what is and to keeping moving anyway, for we can't control the road and we simply are not meant to.