…two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(From “The Road Less Traveled,” by Robert Frost)
It’s a familiar poem, one you were likely introduced to it in a high school English class. Frost’s portrayal of a traveler choosing a direction as he comes to the fork in a road, is a metaphor for life. We make choices daily, between one thing or the other, weighing the benefits, costs, and risks. Sometimes we play it safe; other times we do as Frost’s traveler did, and we take the road “less traveled by.”
I’ve been mulling over choices—ones made nearly 25 years ago, when my husband and I decided to return to California from Canada—and now considering the possibility of a return as we move toward the ambiguous concept of “retirement.” We want to be closer to family, to grandchildren, and yet, we’ve spent the past 25 years building careers and making new friends in California. Like those many years ago, our feelings are conflicted. I long to be in Toronto, while my husband much prefers the warmer climate of Southern California.
“You can’t go home again,” Tom Wolfe once said, but all those years ago, my longing for what I called “home” was so great, his words were just words, ones that surely didn’t apply to me. We made our decision, packed up our belongings and left for the California we’d known as youth. It wasn’t an easy return. The California of memory was far different from the California we encountered, and I have never rediscovered that sense of belonging or home I’d once taken for granted. I had to admit that Tom Wolfe may have been right.
I came to Toronto at the beginning of the month, a trip my husband and I agreed was the necessary prelude to our decision-making process. Of course, Toronto is not the city we left so many years ago, but I’ve delighted in walking through neighborhoods that are still familiar, visit old friends and recall shared memories, and discover that my heart still resides here, despite the years I’ve been away from it.
Yet, the days are sometimes a roller coaster ride of emotion: joy of having time with my daughter and granddaughter, the ease of being with old friends, the long walks around the city, then the shock of Toronto’s the housing market or trying to consider living in, nearby communities which are more affordable than Toronto’s. I return to my rental apartment each night feeling the decision-making has only become more muddied and complicated than I thought possible, and I sink into bed exhausted and more than a little overwhelmed by all we have to consider.
In the poem, “Decision,” by Jane Hirshfield, we find the theme of choices—and change.
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox…
She describes the moment of choice:
Yet something slips through it—
looks around,
sets out in a new direction, for other lands.
…Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned from.
(From: Poetry, May 2008, p.110)
Ah, those forks in the road, and the choices we must make, weighing one possibility against the other. Our hearts wage war with our minds, our dreams with reality. Ultimately, we have to decide on one course of action over another. To do nothing means stagnation. Whatever our decision, we live out our choices, our lives changed by what we have chosen.
I’ll return to California at the end of the week. My mind will be as heavy as my suitcase, weighted down with choices to be made. I’ll say this: life doesn’t get any easier as we age. There are always are choices, this thing or that, this way or the other, yet I trust that the road to be chosen will become clearer in time.
A day or so after I arrived in Toronto, a friend forwarded a poem to several of her friends, I among them. Maybe some greater force guided the poem to my inbox just as I began my information gathering, because it resonated so deeply with me; I’ve kept a copy, reading the final two stanzas over and over since.
May my mind come alive today
to the invisible geography
that invites me to new frontiers,
to break the dead shell of yesterdays,
to risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
to live the life that I would love,
to postpone my dream no longer
but do at last what I came here for
and waste my heart on fear no more.
(by John O’Donohue, “A Morning Offering,” in: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008)
Life poses many decision points, requires us to make choices, big and small, many times in our lives. When have you come to a fork in the road, faced difficult choices and had to choose between them? Were you afraid? Why? Did your head or your heart guide you? Write about it, describing the event, what helped you choose, and how that decision has changed or affected your life.
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