Two Roads Diverged...

May 18, 2014

"I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference..." ~ Robert Frost

There you stand, at the dawn of a new day, at the maw of two paths that stretch onward.  Your breath plumes out in front of you in the cool morning air, a gnawing in the pit of your stomach.

Time.  You are haunted by time.  It clings to you desperately, whispering urgent, harried messages in your ear.  Hurry.  Hurry.  Time is always fleeting, always scampering away.  You know you have only enough time to choose one path, one direction.  And you must move quickly...

One direction is an easy trod, well traveled and packed, the earth solid and sprinkled with footprints, remnants of the many others who have chosen that path before you.  The other is grown over, moss and sticks and rugged earth jutting out from beneath.  Cobwebs stretch across the pathway, glistening with dew, unbroken and lonely.

Which path do you choose?  What kind of person are you?

How can you know the true essence of yourself, the stock of your soul, if you are never challenged?  If you are never put in the face of adversity with no one to rescue you or pull you back; if you never had to be scrappy and resourceful in order to pull yourself out of the mire?

Sure.  The well-traveled path would likely be an easier road... one littered with milder hills, hand-holds filed into the mountain-side in the rough spots, and it may not take as long to get to where you're going.

But whenever I'm faced with this decision, I always veer to the left...  break down those cobwebs, stomp down the overgrown grass, with the knowledge and the anticipation that the road will not be an easy one. 

"And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head...” ~ Primo Levi

 

There's something nurturing and unloving about nature.  Caring and cruel, all at the same time.  When you're deep in the woods, knowing that one misstep might lead to a fall down a deep ravine...knowing that one erroneous handhold of loose clay might cause you to slip from the side of a mountain...  something happens to you.  You rely on yourself in a way that you have never had to.  It's fundamental and raw; live or die, it all falls to you.

 

Going through these trials will give you insight into just how strong you are, how far you will go, how far you CAN go... how can you learn these things about yourself if you went the other way? 

 

Isn't the entire point of our lives, of our journey, to get to know ourselves and what we want?

"Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." ~ Robert Frost

No offense to the wonderful Mr. Frost...but I don't think you can ever come back to where you were.  At least...  not as the same person.

Imagine you went through the muck of the overgrown path, exhausted from tramping around the difficult terrain, bloodied, battered, and bruised; cold, tired, and hungry...but full.  Full of the knowledge that you survived...  that you persevered.  If even this one time.  Feeling more strong and reassured in yourself than you ever have before.

Say you were to backtrack and waltz back to the beginning, taking the easier path instead.  I guarantee the vapid victories would hold far less pleasure, the challenges would seem far less monumental, and the ending would arrive, anticlimactic and dull.  Everyone who finished this first way would be standing around, staring at each other dumbly, no less closer to knowing themselves than before they started off down the trail. 

But those rare few, who had taken the harsh road, with the last of their strength had pulled themselves up one last inch out of a ravine and fallen, exhausted, onto their backs, heaving air in big gulps and staring at the sky...

Those are the special ones.  Because they'll be bloodied and bruised, but they will be smiling...

~A

© 2014 Angela Darling, All Rights Reserved.