So I know you are thinking I am trying to do the same thing in different ways, but you would be wrong, my new sleuths. Well, maybe a little right, but only because some lessons have more than one doorway, and if you miss the first one, I am absolutely going to drag you gently, lovingly, and probably with a little smile, toward the second one. You must understand that the way you get someplace is also the way you might have to escape. Ya, I know it sounds like another riddle, does it not, and I said the same thing when my dad told it to me so many years ago. I think I even gave him that look kids give when adults say something they think is deep and we think is just confusing with extra words. What he meant in simple terms was that when you choose to go left and not right, do you know what you chose to miss and ignore? Or did you just make an uneducated choice that might change your whole journey from that point on? That is the thing about paths, everyone. The path you take is not the only thing that matters. The path you did not take matters too, because sometimes the missing answer is not where you went, but where you refused to look.
So I guess I can come to you with this. Why are you here? Not just here reading my file, although I am very happy you are still with me and not pretending to read while thinking about snacks. I mean, why are you here in your life, right now, in this exact place you are standing, sitting, hiding, or maybe leaning in a very dramatic way against a wall like Karl does when he thinks he is just observing. Did you think about all the options throughout your whole life, to be sure you took the best one every time? Of course you did not. No one does. If we stopped to examine every choice perfectly, we would still be deciding what shoes to wear before breakfast, and I would probably be barefoot forever because that is usually my preferred answer anyway. But if you did not think about every option, where could you have been if you changed something? Who would you know? What would you love? What danger would you avoid? What joy would you never find? So now you know what I mean by path. I did not mean a walking path, but a design you choose by every thought and decision you make every day. Every yes is a step. Every no is a step. Every maybe is you standing in the middle of the road making everyone behind you nervous. And whether you see it or not, those steps become a pattern, and that pattern becomes you.
With that subject now understood, going forward, I will now try to tell you what I have found over the years: that everyone chooses paths by the choices they make. If you can track the choices made for a certain person, you can then produce what the next choice will give them, and so on. That sounds very mysterious, and I do enjoy sounding mysterious sometimes, but it is really just paying attention better than most people want you to. If someone always chooses safety, they will probably choose safety again. If someone always runs toward trouble, and yes, Karl, I am looking at you in my thoughts right now, then you know which direction they will lean when trouble starts waving its arms around. So that is the way you can try to make it ahead of a foe before they get to where they are going. You need to study them and move in their direction, because you know what they will do. Another approach is you can give them a choice and see what happens, then learn their outcomes by following what they have always done, and what they should do in the future given the same conditions. It is not mind reading. It is not magic. It is the quiet work of watching the road someone keeps building under their own feet.

So where this could be used is when bargaining with someone you know the choices they made in the past, so you can predict what choice they will make in the future, allowing you to set traps or even hide what you want them to have to affect other choices after you study their path. Now, before everyone starts thinking I have turned into some sneaky little jungle spy, settle down. Most of the time this is used to help people, not trick them. Parents do it every day without even knowing it. They know one child will run straight to the cookies the second they hear the cookie jar open, while another will pretend they are not interested until everyone leaves the room. Friends do it too. You know who will always be late. You know who always orders the same meal. You know who says they are "just looking" and somehow walks out of the store with three bags anyway. We all leave little footprints behind us by the choices we make. The trick is simply learning to notice them. Once you start seeing those little footprints, you begin to understand the person instead of simply reacting to them. That is why I love paths so much. They are like stories being written one tiny decision at a time.

Now you need to consider these issues when you choose your own path going forward as well, because if you choose the same with no regard for constant decisions, you can also be tracked by another using the same technique. That could bring you closer to danger, you see. To be way honest, I did not want this to be so slap-you-in-the-face honest, but I do see why it seems to be going in that direction. I will try to bring it back to center and not go so G.I. Julie on you so much while I continue this file. Karl says every once in a while I stop sounding like the happy jungle girl he married and start sounding like someone about to brief an army. I told him somebody around here has to keep him alive because it certainly is not going to be his curiosity doing it. That man would chase a glowing purple doorway just because it looked "interesting." I would be standing behind him saying, "Karl, honey... maybe let's not walk toward the thing with tentacles." Then, five minutes later, I would probably follow him anyway because I love him. See? Even I have predictable paths.

Anyway, I have to say, still finding someone's path is as important as it can be when it comes to kids as well. If you are good at path location, you will know without even asking a question if your child is going down the right path. Children leave clues everywhere. They leave them in what they draw, what they ask about, what makes them laugh, and even what suddenly makes them quiet. That last one is usually the biggest clue of all. Adults spend so much time listening to words that they forget to watch changes. Kids tell you where they are going long before they ever get there if you simply pay attention. I do know I will be watching from a distance and pushing or nudging her into the proper path to go forward with her life, no matter where the path takes her. Well... almost no matter where. If she tells me one day she wants to wrestle crocodiles professionally, we might have a mother-and-daughter discussion first. A very long discussion. Preferably somewhere there are no crocodiles.

And my final thing on paths is I do not believe in luck, or golden coins. That is good if you ever find one or think your luck is going to be too good to be true. The chances are that your mind knows more than you are willing to say to yourself. What I mean is our deep mind will always move ahead as you have taught yourself, even if your voice does not want to. So we get the good-to-be-true thought. What that means is the deep part of you knows there is no way in hell this is going to go well, and it will be bad if you continue down the fantasy your voice has clung to. Meanwhile, your front-of-your-mind self is happy as hell because everything seems to be going your way. Sometimes in books that has been called your inner voice or conscience talking to you. I think it is simply the part of you that has quietly been collecting clues while the rest of you has been busy celebrating.

So no, I do not believe a man will drop gold coins in the road and not come back to get them in seconds after realizing it, nor do I believe that luck is ever a lucky thing. It is like in Vegas. You will win the jackpot. Great luck, right? Everybody cheers. Bells ring. Flashing lights go off. You are hugging strangers you never met before because apparently money makes everybody family for about thirty seconds. So now you go out and buy that sports car you always wanted. Still great luck. Then January comes around carrying taxes like they are wrapped in pretty paper, and suddenly you realize you now owe enough that you could not even sell that car to pay everything off. So now your "luck" has turned into a problem bigger than the thing that made you happy in the first place. As I said before, I do not believe in luck unless I make it myself from knowledge I have or facts I can find. I believe in preparation. I believe in paying attention. I believe in seeing one more clue than the next person. That is not luck. That is work. The funny part is that people watching from the outside usually call hard work "good luck" because they never saw all the little decisions that built the path to get there.

So now I believe I brought to you the paths I learned about when I was almost fourteen and already lived in the jungle. Looking back now, I do not think Dad was really teaching me about paths at all. I think he was teaching me how to think. The paths were simply the exercise. The real lesson was learning that every choice has another choice hiding behind it, and if you slow down just a little, sometimes you can see both.

I want to throw something that is so off that it has never been pointed out before, so I will do it now, as it does demonstrate a part in my path talk here. So as I am sure you heard in a file a bit back, my mom used to call me "Jungle Julie," but did you ever ask why? We lived in a house. I had never gone to the jungle before. My mom at that time lived in the middle of the city. Why then did she call me Jungle at all? There is no reason for it at all. Why did she? I will never know, but it fits now because I moved to a jungle after her death. Was she seeing me in the future, or did something or someone else tell her where I would end up? The fact is I will never know, but it is very strange indeed. Sometimes I wonder if mothers simply see paths better than everyone else. Maybe they notice little things the rest of us never think about. Maybe she saw something in me that I would not understand until years later. Or maybe she just liked the way it sounded. I honestly do not know. But every time I think about it, it makes me smile just a little because somehow that silly little nickname followed me through my whole life until one day it was no longer just a nickname at all. It had become my path. So I will leave paths now with that thought, that maybe my mom knew my path before anyone else ever did, and if she did, I hope she also knew that one day I would find my way exactly where I was supposed to be. Right here... talking to all of you, my newest little sleuths. As I talk you through how to solve the mysteries written through our full book series, Karl has called the UnderBelly Case Files.I do hope you got something from this very special subject that has changed my life forever since I was listening to my Karl when he said, “ I do not move forward this way,” and I knew I was going to be with that man forever someday. Toodles...

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