Paved with good intention

Rethinking a piece of advice from my father.

“The path to hell is paved with good intentions.”

First guiding words of wisdom in the relationship category that I ever received from my father. Perhaps a dads way of attempting to stave off his daughters dating life until the age of 30. Perhaps more effective than a shotgun. Perhaps not. Definitely a way of bequeathing to me his chronic fear of inevitable disappointment. After 10 years of this advice echoing off the walls in my mind, I have come to understand that I took a different interpretation of this statement than what was possibly intended. In my fathers life he had many circumstances in which he understandably lost hope in the intentions of others. So his version of the statement painted a picture where his own intentions were good and his path was clear, however the slope of the landscape, the paths of others, the work of subcontractors, wrong directions and unforeseen circumstances forced his path into hell. My version was much more internalized. In my young literal mind I envisioned that every path ended in hell. No matter where it went or who’s it was, everyone paving with good intentions would end up in miserable burning agony. Not ideally where I wanted to go. So this left me with two options, first I could sit still, don’t move forward and you wont end up in hell, or second deny the antecedent - don’t have good intentions. If the path to hell is paved with good intentions, then a path paved in malevolence would lead you to - not hell. I tried both, first a static relationship of consistency and predictability. This might work for some, but my world between the ages of 15 and 19 couldn't have been more opposite, and I got bored. Feeling a strong desire for something more dynamic, yet still fearful that the pursuit of which would lead to my suffering, I followed my second alternative. While my conscious would not let me be outright malicious, my next relationship was grounded in self-service with a disregard for where the path might lead and who would be affected along the way. Thus I learned a philosophy lesson the hard way, my argument was invalid. Bad intentions wouldn't take me any further from despair than standing still would. So here I am, sitting infront of this piece of kindred advice that I have quite seriously taken to heart. Now I am forced to consider another alternative, it is simply a piece of advice, I can take it or leave it. I am tired of trying to prove it wrong or living in fear that I will prove it right. So I could drop it, thanks but no thanks, it comes from a place that is irrelevant to me and my life and good luck to you and yours. Well nice try. There is something about blood connections that just don’t let you get away with that type of thinking. So my curiosity pushed it further. I recently learned that the popularly quoted line ‘I took the road less traveled by’ from the poem ‘two roads’ is almost always misused because it is taken out of context. The traveler does not in fact take the road less traveled by but discusses that in the future he will tell the story as if he had. Maybe I have been limited in my exposure, maybe the lesson was not to lose all hope, but instead to learn the importance of the pursuit of knowledge. Take the advice and expand it, learn the missing words or if there are none, make them up. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. What if the next line were to say But the path to heaven is paved with good actions? Maybe my pursuit to a so called divinity might be possible by focusing on one benevolent act at a time. Is it simply the lesson of follow through that would lead me to the assent into happiness? It’s worth a try. So my love advice to my daughter might instead be “hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works”. Or maybe I’ll just stick to ‘and they lived happily ever after’.

Author's Note

This is my first time sharing any personal piece of writing..