The road not taken

(my last post about paths or futures in a while, promise ;))

Sometimes I am struck by a sense of nostalgia when looking back at choices made. I wonder about “what if”. These fantasies are not painful. I do not regret.

Well, that is a lie. I do regret. Saying that I don’t wish I had been more sensitive or less sensitive at occasions, that I had done certain things differently, that I had made different choices every now and then would be speaking falsehood. So, let me rephrase that and re-explain the previous statement.

Every now and then in life you have the feeling to stand at a crossroad. With several different defining choices. You have no idea where these choices will lead you. Personally, I feel that at this moment I’m nearing one of those crossroads, where you have to make choices. And like I usually do while progressing forward, I am looking back. In my life I have made choices which I cannot return to. I cannot re-choose my highschool and how that environment there has shaped me. I have already walked one road and with that experience it has changed the second road too. However, I do wonder, what if I’d gone to a different educational environment, met different people, found myself inspired by other persons. How different would I be? I remember that in the Harry Potter series once remarked that our abilities are not what defines us, but our choices. I see some truth in that. Yet the unknown of the road not taken raises questions. You can never test yourself. You can never know which would have been a better option. There is no chance of rehearsal. This idea is beautifully expressed by Milan Kundera.

I hope sometimes that my path does not define me, I just don’t really have a second chance to walk a different one. So in the end, I better enjoy the one I walk, and when looking back I can only look with nostalgia, but it is smarter not to regret. I get to make my choices, I get to choose a path and that’s a gift. The forest is dense, I can’t see what is ahead, but I’ll try and enjoy the scenery as much as I can, and not reminiscence too much over lost paths.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference