world · Day 147 · Week 21
The Goat's Path
There is something inside you that knows the way without being told — like an old goat on a mountain who has never once needed a map.
She did not bless the mountain by climbing harder. She blessed it by climbing the same.
High in the foothills of the Himalayas, in a small Tibetan village where the air was thin and the prayer flags moved all day in the wind, there lived a goat. She was old. Her coat was the colour of river stones. Her left horn was a little crooked from a fall she had taken as a kid. The villagers called her Mola, which only means grandmother, because nobody could remember her real name and she did not seem to mind.
Mola had a path. Every morning, before even the youngest monks of the small gompa had finished their first prayers, she would rise from her straw, stretch each leg in turn, and begin to walk. Up the slope behind the village. Past the rock that looked like a sleeping bear. Through the stand of dwarf juniper. Across the small stream that froze in winter and sang in summer. Around the old prayer wheel that nobody turned anymore. And back down.