Everything is on its way to somewhere...

“Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do?  You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.” Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

This is a very important thought to remember throughout life’s journey.  Throughout the last six months have working hard not to have any expectations, but rather, just to live my life and enjoy each day and moment as much as possible, I have come to really appreciate the unknown.  It doesn’t feel as big somehow when you’re just living and letting each day take you where it may.  Some days may be more productive than others.  Some may be darker than others.  Some may be so very beautiful in their simplicity (one of my favorite things in life!).  Some may hold surprises around the corner.  It is all unknown until it just happens.  And it is how we handle the reality of each day’s unknown path that makes us who we are.

Just as Robert Frost wrote in his 1916 poem, “The Road Not Taken”:

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 traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Both paths looked similar to the traveller, both were still untouched that day but he was at a crossroads and had to make a decision.  You can look at that decision in sorrow knowing that “how way leads on to way” you may never come back to that same spot and have the opportunity to travel down the other path.  Or you can simply see it as life being life and you just living it.  Each decision we make in life leads us to somewhere.  Everything is on its way to somewhere.  And most of the time there are choices involved in the where and the how and the why.  You can embrace your choices or you can mourn them.  But how can you enjoy the path you’ve chosen if you’re always wondering about the path you didn’t choose to take?  We must embrace each step and each path during each day and know that all of it is taking us to where we are meant to be.  So no matter where we are in our lives, whether we are in the woods or on the open highway; whether the path be the less travelled one or the one with many other footsteps in it…each road we take, if we let it, can “[make] all the difference.”