Once there was a traveller walking a long road through the hills. He had been walking many days, his feet sore, his water nearly gone. He longed for home — a real home, where the journey would finally end.

At a fork in the road he met an old woman resting under a tree.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Home," he said. "But I am so tired. I have walked so far, and home feels no closer."

The old woman pointed down the smaller, quieter path. "Take that road," she said. "It leads straight to the place your heart is looking for. It is nearer than you think. Just trust it, and walk."

The traveller peered down the path. It looked plain. No grand gates, no golden signposts. Just a soft dirt trail winding gently up the hill.

"That little path?" he said, frowning. "That can't be it. Surely the road home is bigger, grander, harder to find. You must be mistaken, old mother."

"I am not mistaken," she said kindly. "But you must believe it to walk it. The path will carry anyone who trusts it. It will carry no one who scoffs."

The traveller shook his head. He could not bring himself to trust something so simple. So he turned away from the quiet path and went back the way he had come — back onto the wide, dusty highway he already knew, the road that went round and round through town after town, never quite arriving.

And round and round he went. Through summers and winters. Past the same crossroads again and again. Sometimes, far off, he would glimpse that little path on the hill, and a part of him would ache. But each time he told himself, *No, it's too simple, it can't be real,* and he kept circling.

Krishna tells Arjuna this with great tenderness, not as a threat. The door home is open. The path is right there, plain and quiet and true. But it only opens for the one who trusts it enough to take a step. Those who scoff and turn away are not punished — they simply keep walking the long looping road they could have left behind, missing the home that was waiting all along.