Decisions

My favorite peom is "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,
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.

(I took this photo on the Pony Express Trail in western Utah a few years ago)


We make decisions every day. Small ones and big ones.  Each decision directs our future down a different path than if an alternate decision was made.  Some of the decisions turn out to be good, some bad and others are of limited consiequence.  We don't actually realize that many of our small decisions are choices that could change are life.  Other choices are those that we know are important and sometimes we struggle over those, knowing that the consequences of the decision could indeed be life altering.

When I face an important decision I find myself thinking of Frost's poem

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.