I just finished watching a movie that really made me think. Throughout the movie the main character experiences what you assume are flashbacks of her life while doing a stressful job. In the end you learn that she was actually seeing into the future. She saw her daughter, and the beautiful memories they would make, she also saw a terminal illness for her daughter that would eventually take her life and drive her father away. The interesting part of all this is that the movie implies that even knowing what she was going to face she still chose to fall for her husband and take that path.
Can you imagine if we lived in a world where time wasn't linear? How weird would that be? What if we could see into our future and really know the consequences of our choices and how it would impact who we would become? With a comprehensive perspective we could truly understand the impact of our today and make our tomorrows that much better...or would we put things off knowing there would be other opportunities or would we obsess about making decisions, fearful of making the wrong ones and never decide? Would we TOTALLY play it safe?
Knowing how I feel about myself and my capabilities and shortcomings I am certain I would not have chosen the path I am now walking for myself. If someone had told me ten years ago I would have three children and marry and bury a husband in the next ten years I would have stopped dating for fear it might actually happen. Nothing could have prepared me for the difficulties I have faced in that time; but at the same time no one could have accurately explained the moments of PURE JOY I would experience. The most vivid memories I have are the day I married my husband, the birth of each of my children and a CA trip with my husband the year he passed. So, I guess the question is, would I give up those amazing parts in order to avoid the difficult times? Honestly, I wouldn't give up the good stuff for anything and that is the reward of the hard days, I get to keep the good ones and not matter how bad it gets or how frustrated I feel I still have that good stuff to lean on.
In Robert Frost's well known poem "The Road Not Taken" he talks about choosing the road less traveled by. Read the full poem here. What I find interesting about this poem is there's no obvious "right answer" when the two paths were originally evaluated and he even says after having passed down his chosen path that his passing "had worn them really about the same," so at the moment of choosing it didn't seem he was choosing the unpopular path or the easier or more difficult way but in the end he says, "I took the road less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
I used to want so badly to know what is coming next in my life (which wasn't helped by the interview question, "where do you see yourself in the next five/ten years") and I've been extremely impatient with the lack of direction I sometimes feel but one day as I pondered the thought came to me that if I had known ten years ago what was coming I would have been TERRIFIED; so much so that I wouldn't have made the same choices. So, I move into my next ten years with the understanding that it will be filled with challenges and joys beyond what I can now understand and hope for and trust that while this is NOT the path I would choose for myself it is what is best for me. Good and bad the path I have chosen is the road less traveled by and I trust that choosing that path will make all the difference.
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