Track

A little used, unconventional, or more natural way of going about something. A direction already taken and made by others but not often used – not a main thoroughfare.

We can be making a new track or path, a way or method that is not a way that many use, but if you wish to travel a new way, it is one without any tracks, it can be very powerful.

We all leave tracks from what we do in life, so we leave a ‘track record’ which is worth being aware of. So, what is your track record?

Example: I was aware of the danger of two, or maybe one young child. Who had been allowed to carry a small animal which acted as a scent lead for large tracker dogs that were hunting and would attack and kill whatever they were tracking. I found one of the boys trying to hide under a pot or a basin in the spare ground behind the house I lived in London. I pulled him out from his attempts to hide. He had no idea of his danger. Two of the dogs – perfectly harmless and friendly when not hunting, were coming close to me and trying to lick me. They had huge mouths. I got very angry with one man, a farmer type, who I thought had been careless in the way he was urging the dogs to hunt. I swore at him in public, calling him something like a ‘fucking idiot’. There was a large public gathering and I wondered what the public would think of me swearing.

Example: How am relating to my dream lover? Are there problems, difficulties or angers and resentments in the way of my union with the lover? Honestly, what is my track record in loving? Dare I really look at myself and say how I have destroyed or enhanced love with a partner?

Railway tracks: The rails themselves represent orthodoxy, the accepted way of going about things, moral values or a direction that is hard to change, and perhaps shared with others. Thus, one can say someone has gone ‘off the rails’. A communal or generally accepted direction; habitual pathways of thought or action; rigidly fixed to certain attitudes or way of life; inflexibility.

Idioms: Off the beaten track; in one’s tracks; lose track of; make tracks for; hard on someone’s track; on the right/wrong track; track record; blaze a trail. See: Road; Railway for railway track.