How many roads does a man walk down?

A cliche, uttered by a man who defined cool for so many, but who has become cliche ridden in his own lifetime.

And yet. And yet...

Time was, you became a doctor, priest or a garda. Someone of respect, worth respecting in the rural community I grew up in. I was the first of my extended family to go to college, earn my stripes and head off out into the professional world. I broke the mold. The mindset of those who supported me was limited to thinking that I needed someone to model myself on, to look after me. A nepotic (SIC!) approach that I railed against even as I followed it.

I was pushed in one direction, but was pulled in another. The love of my academic life was an inanimate object, an Apple Macintosh. I wanted to pull at the piece of string hanging from the edge and unravel it to the beginning. To learn, to find out, to quench a curiosity that was so thirsty it caused my other academic pursuits to dry up.

And so it was.

What really got me going was the huge vista of possibilities that were opened to my imagination, fed on a diet of Look and Learn, 2000AD and people like Arthur C Clarke. What limit could be placed on this inanimate object, except the narrow confines of my own mind? It was as if the conversion on the road to Damascus turned out to be a change of mind brought on by forgeting what Paul started out to do in the first place.

In my haste to expand my horizons, my spirt was neglected. Computers could not replace my soul, even if I didn't believe I had one. They were a tool, an extension of me that I did not use to enrich myself as such. In the end the questions spiraled round on themselves to a place where I had to ask questions of myself, that I was not prepared to ask let alone answer.

I broke. I cried. I railed. I nearly died.

In my rush to push out as far as I could, I left no support within the vacumn of my spirit. When the walls collapsed, it was as if every aspect of my world fell in on top of me. My saviour, this inanimate object, could do nothing for me. What was I to do, to become?

The answers were hard to come by. They required hard examination of myself inside and out. People came to mean more to me than I had ever imagined and the virtual world I had created, along with the masks that I wore went into decline. My relationship with the computer had to be redfined. Limitations were applied and the boundaries between worlds were patrolled.

My voracious appetite for answers to questions outside of me was tamed for a while. I built myself up, put in place the beams and crosspars that would shore me up. My relationships were more defined, tangible. I had an anchor that would allow me to begin my voyage all over again.

And now I'm loose! I'm out here trying to find out what means most to me. I have a purpose that allows me to focus on what I need to do. In all of this, the computer has found its place again. I have read and spoken to some very brave, wise people. I have suffered to listen to the words of fools. I have a centre that I can rely on to govern myself and not be absorbed into the other all. I don't seek divine intervention, I don't want answers to all my questions, I just want to be.

After all of this, I can look back on my life and consider how many roads I have taken to arrive at my current self and can only wonder if I had had a GPS device to bring me the better road to now, would I be the same man.