The Paths We Walk

I’ve always believed our early experiences quietly shape the paths we walk later in life. 

They don’t announce themselves as meaningful at the time. They simply happen. And then one day, years later, you realise something was being formed there.

One of mine begins in the French Alps, at Lake Annecy, when I was nine.

I had always enjoyed time in nature, but this was my first big day hike - my first expedition, just me and my dad. And like Winnie the Pooh, one must have provisions for an adventure. So our morning began at the patisserie: croissants, pastries, cheese, water, a map, a compass. The kind of simple anticipation that feels like magic when you’re young.

We climbed steadily through the morning, arriving at the summit just as the sun reached its highest point. I remember sitting hip-to-hip with my dad on the mountainside, looking down on the lake glinting far below. Eating lunch, drinking water, catching our breath. It felt both ordinary and enormous.

When the Path is Not the Path

The plan was to be back by mid-afternoon. 

But mountains have their own logic.

The descent wound and twisted in ways the map didn’t reveal. 

What was meant to be an easy two-hour return became a long, slow, uncertain journey through the midsummer heat. 

By late afternoon, we were high on the mountainside, without food, without water, and although neither of us said it out loud… lost.

This was before phones lived in our pockets. Before GPS. Before you could call for help.

So we just kept walking.

My dad kept my mind busy with stories of military history [interestingly still my favourite stories to listen to] and my feet busy with the rhythm of one foot then the other. Years later, he told me that during that time he had already begun quietly planning where we might sleep for the night.

And then, we turned a corner.

High on the mountain, with no roads, no sign that anyone should be there, was a small, self-sufficient farm with a creperie attached.

Not on the map.
Only reachable by foot.
Everything made from the land itself.

For a moment, we wondered if we were imagining it.
It felt like stumbling upon a quiet miracle.

We sat and ate crepes, watching the goats and chickens that had provided the very milk and eggs that made them. The kind farmers refilled our bottles and reassured us:

“Keep going. The path you’re on will take you home”.

Hours later, we reached the base of the mountain… to find the mountain rescue team assembled by my understandably worried mother.

A day to remember…

A Walk I Still Carry With Me

That day taught me something:

• You can feel lost and still keep going.

• Hope often appears after you think it won’t.

• The right path can feel wrong while you’re on it.

• And steadiness matters more than certainty.

On that mountain, my dad didn’t tell me how to handle difficulty, he showed me.

In his steady courage.

In the way he held the situation without making it the centre of everything.

In the way he simply kept going when things were hard…

Still making space for humour, for stories, for lightness, for me.

I didn’t see it then. You rarely do at nine.
But something in me settled that day:
the sense that I could stand in uncertainty and keep taking the next step.

And that’s the kind of man - father, psychologist, friend - I want to be:

Not the one who never feels fear.
Not the one with all the answers.

But the one who stays beside.
Who keeps walking.

Who knows that sometimes the most powerful thing we offer is our steadiness, until others find their own.

Who shows that progress doesn’t depend on certainty, only on being supported enough to take the next step.

What We Inherit, What We Choose

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand something that feels central to the work I do, and to the work of being human:

We don’t just inherit height or eye colour.
We inherit ways of walking through the world.

How we meet stress.

How we step toward uncertainty or step back from it.

How we approach difficulty: head-on, sideways, or not at all.

How we offer care or guard against needing it.

How we choose a direction when the path isn’t clear.

Some of this is in us from the beginning - temperament, sensitivity, the baseline shape of our nervous system.

And some of it is shaped along the way - through the models we watched, the conditions we adapted to, the ground we learned to walk on.

The work of adulthood is not to reject what came before, nor to repeat it without question.

It is to notice what formed us and choose what we continue.

To ask, gently and honestly:

• Which ways of walking still fit the terrain I’m on now?

• Which steps were once protective, but have become heavy to carry?

• Which strengths have been with me all along, waiting to be recognised?

We learn early from those who walked ahead of us.

But we decide, as adults, how we walk from here.

An Invitation to Walk

If you can, go for a walk.

Not to be productive.
Not to get anywhere.

Just to walk.

Side-by-side if you can.

Sometimes the mountain is the teacher.
Sometimes the person beside you is.
Often, it’s both.

Matt