MaXIMIze - Choice

Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken has been on my mind a lot lately, due to a myriad of life changes that have come and are still coming my way this year.

Since it is in the public domain, here is the poem in its entirety:

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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Standing at the crossroads can be a terrifying feeling at times, however, we all stand there at one point in time or another, and sometimes many times depending on where our lives take us.

What some of us never get to though is described in the third stanza of this poem, which is being able to truly continue on our journey instead of ending up in a repeating cycle. And this boils down to making choices - sometimes difficult ones - in order to truly move forward in life instead of spending it in the roundabout.

Instead of rushing willy nilly into what life throws our way, we need to stop, breathe, and listen to that small, still voice each of us has inside of us. We need to fully process what has gone on before rather than locking it in a box, throwing away the key, and hoping it never finds its way back home.

Putting what has gone before in a box temporarily, to take the time to stop, breathe, and listen, is one thing. However, you need to remember to open the box, take out what has gone before, and really examine it in the cold light of day in order to process it and move forward instead of repeating the same patterns over and over and over again.

I know this can be a scary thing - moving from the known to the unknown can be terrifying at times, even if the unknown you are moving toward is a good thing. However, this is how we grow as human beings - by moving forward. Some of us never grow, but instead remain like trees stunted by lack of water or lack of sun. Unlike those trees, who are rooted in place and cannot move to better conditions by their own volition, we do have the freedom to move on to better things.

So what is your choice today? Will you be a stunted tree, never reaching the sun, or will you take the time to stop, breathe, listen to the small, still voice inside of you and release the patterns of the past so you can move on to a bright and wonderful future?