Grieve the road not taken

This was originally published in my newsletter.

All my life I’ve been tantalised by little wisps of dreams. Whether these dreams belong to me or to others is hard to discern, but they arise and tempt me all the same. I could live here, or there. I could be this kind of person, or that. I could marry this person, or not.

While the wisps stir a powerful yearning, they tend to be ambiguous with their imagery and narrative. Like a siren call, they pull me away from my life as it is, towards my life as it could be.

There have been times when I listened, smiled and decided to follow that call. Sometimes that paid off, sometimes not.

There have been times when I listened, smiled, and decided to stay my course. Sometimes that paid off, sometimes not.

And there have been times when I listened, frowned and, in abdicating a decision, I tore myself apart.

Through these experiences, I suffered mostly through abdication, not through decision.

When two roads diverged in a wood, Robert took the road less travelled by, and that, he said, made all the difference. I wonder whether Robert grieved the other road, and in so doing liberated himself to step wholeheartedly onto the road he took. Or, once his decision was made, did he allow the wisps of his unfulfilled potential tear his spirit from his chosen road?

Perhaps it wasn’t the road he took that made all the difference, but the nature of his decision to take it.

I was born as a field of pure potential. As I grow, my potential crystallises, piece by piece, into actuality. To welcome this is to look directly into and accept my own finitude and death, to be rewarded, perhaps, with a sonorous, bright life of potential made manifest. To deny it is to cling to the promise of potential without action, to be rewarded, perhaps, with anxiety and resentment. It is the nature of the wave function to collapse when it encounters the world of matter—of things that matter.

In tying himself to the mast, Odysseus made his choice. He invited the full force of a road not taken to ravage and transmute his soul, yet he remained steadfast on the road he took.

I feel that I must do the same. Wherever those dream wisps come from, and whether they’re mine or not, I shall listen to them with a smile. Some I will pursue, the rest I will decide against. From time to time, I shall tie myself to the mast and grieve the road not taken.

But, above all, when I have decided which road to take, I will walk it wholeheartedly.