The Road Less Traveled

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. Woody Allen

For the longest time I was intrigued by and a bit jealous of those people that appeared to have their lives all mapped out. “In five years I will be here; in ten years, there; and, in fifteen years, at the top of the heap.” While their career path looked like a highway with signs that read, “In two miles you will be turning onto the Yellow Brick Rd.,” mine has been more like a snaking pathway through a dense forest enveloped in foggy mists that swallow you up and never spit you out.

“How in the heck did I get here?”

“Maybe I should have gone there.”

“This is not even a pathway … is it?“

“(W)hisky-(T)ango-(F)oxtrot!”

“I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference,” (Frost) sounds so romantic and adventurous when you are twenty, but after a decade or two you begin wondering if the reason your road is less traveled is because no sane person would ever freely choose to walk this way.

Fact is, however, even those people zooming down a well-lit highway are often wondering if they are wandering.

“Do I really want to go here?”

“What difference is it really going to make if I don’t go there?”

“This is a fairly wide road … maybe I am headed toward destruction?” (Matthew 7:13,14)

My guess is that when most people evaluate their journeys they wrestle with would’a-could’a-should’a, imposter syndrome, and other such second-guessing brought on by self-doubt. After all, not being gods, none of us are perfect or omniscient. This is why our journeys—the quests we engage in—are acts of faith, not certainty.

I have come to believe that, at the end of the day, what matters most is not so much what path we chose, but who we are becoming while we traverse our chosen paths.

Are we giving ourselves to what matters most? (And what, he asks, “Matters most”? Why faith, hope and love, of course!)

Are we constantly educating ourselves in great ideas and values?

Are we caring for our bodies and souls?

Are we seeking after the God who is Love, Light and Life?

So, whether you are zooming down an interstate or crawling along a path through underbrush, don’t become so focused on the destinations for which you aspire that you lose sight of the one that is taking the journey… for what does it profit a man or woman who arrives at the Yellow Brick Rd with a shriveled up soul?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009