The Road Less Traveled By ....

Throughout this journey called life we come to many crossroads and must make a decision which pathway to follow. When we choose a certain path to walk we often are not able to return to that point in the road where we were once at to choose another route. Our lives are a collection of such choices which leads us to where we stand today in our lives. We can never go backwards in time and change our mistakes for what is done is done and cannot be altered. Fortunately, we can learn from our mistakes and make changes today that can bring about better circumstances. The future is yet to come and none of us knows what tomorrow brings. We may have good "guestimations" as to what might happen but until that moment actually arrives we have no certainty. That leaves us with today; the here-and-now that we do indeed have some sense of control over. We will face many divergent pathways and must choose the one that we will traverse. Which path will you choose to follow today and how will this decision impact your tomorrows? I leave you with a poem that I studied as an undergraduate at Cornell which has followed me each and every day of my life. I hope that you will consider wandering off the beaten path to explore and enjoy the possibilities that lie in a direction yet unexplored. Habits are difficult to break away from as they offer us the comfort of the known while leading us on in the same direction that we have always taken which may accomplish little but to maintain our mundane lives. Which road will you choose to walk today?



The Road Not Taken

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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

...Robert Frost

Choosing the road less traveled by can indeed make all the difference! Happy pondering.... The Professor