A SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLAN

Sometimes in life you just have to turn around and go back the way you came. I don’t mean that you try and relive the past but that you think about it a bit and perhaps, and as a result you change course.

Before you do however, you may have stopped or been stopped along the way. Whether this is to look at something you are approaching, to look over what lies ahead, to look over your shoulder or simply because you don’t feel you are heading in the right direction, you are currently stopped. You may even be lost, or feel you are.

In any case, until now you have been walking along in a direction you have chosen. Every choice/action has a consequence. What I am trying to say is that choosing one course means that we have not chosen an alternative one. The choice we made changes the result.

When Robert Frost wrote his poem The Road Not Taken* he was talking about coming to a crossroads. He saw two paths in front of him. Because he knew he could not take both and had to choose one, he tried to see as far down each one as he could. He knew that, life being what it was, he probably would not return to the other. He selected one path and went forward on it. This choice made all the difference in his life.

I don’t think that most of us think much about the path ahead. Some elements are already in place because of earlier choices we made. Sometimes we just ‘go with the flow’. Especially concerning unimportant matters, we usually just put one foot in front of the other and move ahead. In interacting with other people, we adapt some parts of our actions to go along, and get along, with others. 

Most of us, especially if we are relatively happy with ourselves and our lives, don’t spend too much time wondering what it might have been like had we taken a different route, approach or course of action in life. Beyond wanting to feel we are moving forward, many of us just move, act and react, as a day unfolds.

From time to time, however, perhaps on New Year’s or at one of the annual celebrations with which we mark our year, we might consider how different things might have been had we made a different choice.

The writer Tom Wolfe memorably said, ‘you can’t go home again’. Possibly he felt this way and possibly he is right. Whether we can backup or turn around and ask whether there is still time to do something else may however, be possible. Sometimes it is not too late to backup a bit and take another approach or direction.

Being an optimist I rarely think that anything we say or do is permanent. I know others have said the same thing many times and sometimes think that the only thing we can predict is that things will change. Others say that the more things change, the more they remain the same, perhaps because of our essential natures as human beings.

I feel positive about the fact that there are many times in life when we get a second chance to correct or modify a decision we made and generally resume our journey with a slight change of plan or direction.

Sometimes we have to be gentle and kind to ourselves, sometimes to others and let ourselves, and them, change our minds and try something else. Our happiness might just depend upon it.

In any case, something that might make a difference when we feel delayed, or stalled or stuck or lost, is a choice we make to get moving again and I think it is a good idea.

*http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536

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,

    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.