The path that remains is the one a man can still walk from an interior center after the traditional supports have gone. Traditional order once gave the path an outer form: rank, rite, a confirmation that did not depend on his mood. Those supports have disappeared. The differentiated man walks from the center he still holds, and the missing confirmation is no reason to stop. The path belongs to him for as long as the center holds.
The age fills the absence with paths that look confirmed. A circle offers belonging and calls the circle a way. A role with a title attached pretends the path has an institution again because a name has been assigned. Chatter spends the hours describing the order that ought to return, and the description replaces the walk. Each offer asks him to hand the center to something outside that will do the confirming.
Young men meet this as the pressure to wait for a restored order. A job that rewards only output will pay him to produce and call the production a path. Softness says a center kept without witnesses is isolation, and proposes he rejoin until the path feels shared. Hunger to be seen asks him to narrate the walk until the narration is the thing being walked.
Walk the next week from the center, and do not collect a witness. Keep the hour already set when the room is still waiting for a larger order. Finish the work to the measure, and leave the account of the path unsent. Decline the role whose gift is a confirmation for men who have agreed to stop walking alone. The man who can do these things while no outer support has returned is on the path the cycle left him.