The Road Less Traveled

Road Less Traveled

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 onto 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 took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

~ Robert Frost

In my first post since returning, I wrote the sentence: "As a man among men, I am loving and understanding." What does this mean?

To me the key word in that sentence is understanding because if I am understanding, I am being inherently loving. All of us are on a journey and we choose our paths daily whether we do so consciously (awake behind the wheel) or unconsciously (asleep behind it). Even choosing not to choose... is choosing. 

My challenge has been respecting other people's path. Letting them decide the path they wish free of judgment or coercion. I've mostly struggled with this when someone I love chooses not to choose or chooses a path that hurts them... or me. In fact, the more I've loved a person, the harder I've tried to get them to choose the "right" path. Right meaning the one I feel is right. 

What is clearer to me now than it ever has been before is that every single decision or indecision one makes about their life is sacred. Helping another to find a path is honorable when they reach out for help, but not until then. There is experience in being "lost" and experience in making mistakes and ripping someone from that place without being asked is a disservice to them.

Of the men I watched transformed this weekend, all of them - every single one - came there on their own accord.  Oh they, like me, may have been shown this as a path they could take but every single one of them chose to take that path.  These men grew and changed because they chose to.  Not because someone forced them to.  I think the entire power of the weekend for me was wrapped up in the fact that these men had had enough.  For some it came late in life and for the lucky, it came at a young age.

The Monday before last weekend, I had, what I would term as a nervous breakdown on the phone with my mom.  I had truly reached a new depth of pain and loneliness.  I had had enough.  It was from this place that I entered the weekend and it was from this place that I emerged courageous and confident.  That transformation took place because I was willing to take a chance on the unknown.  I chose the road less traveled and, for me, that will make all the difference.