It is pretty much impossible for us to deny certain things in life. Don’t worry. I’m not going to launch into some “soap box” soliloquy about abstinence, prohibition, saying no to drugs or the like. I’m talking about something so much deeper, something so woven into the inner depths of our fabric that the very separation of such results in a mortal wounding from which there is no recovery. I can’t remember what it used to be like, unattached, unabashed, unresponsive to life and the world around me. But that has all changed.
Once upon a time, I read a well over-quoted, over-used poem by the great Robert Frost. We all know it, and most of us have been around long enough to know where both of those roads lead. But most of us also know the cost of each as well. The revelation of “The Road not Taken” is not the pioneering spirit of Frost to embark on such a journey, but that he had leveled the cost of his decision with the benefit and had decided that it was well worth it (of course Frost himself said he was writing while thinking of a friend who had been to war).
Now to many of us it seems clear what we should do. Most decisions are made with our instincts. Ok. You can put yourself through the planning phase, weigh all of the options, etc., but the reality of the situation is your final decision 99.9% of the time doesn’t vary from your initial reaction. Why is this? Why is it that we always know what we are going to do, which isn’t always what we necessarily should do?
Those questions are not ones that I can actually answer for everyone, because every individuals reasoning changes. I will say this, though. Every decision you make carries a weight in the light of your future. Every decision has a cost, every reaction carries a fee, every moment has its expense. Before you do anything, before you say anything: are you willing to pay the price?
Just a question. Trust me, you already know the answer. I leave you with my favorite Frost:
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
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