The Road Not Taken

The dayspring of a new year provokes many to wonder “what if?”  What if I had married that other person?  What if I had taken that other job?  What if I had enrolled in that other major or had earned that next degree?  Or gone to a different school?  What if I had bought a different house or moved to a different neighborhood?  What makes these thoughts even more exasperating is if they grow out of unhappiness with the present.  Would you be happier?  Would you enjoy life more?  Would you be better off?

I have to SCREAM at you for a moment.  You need to stop it!  Persisting down this trail of thought will never do you any good.  It’s crying over spilt milk, unringing a bell or going back in time.  Not only is it futile, it is taking an axe to the life you now have.  I give you three powerful reasons why you need to quit wallowing in remorse.

1.   Had you taken the alternative path, you undoubtedly would be wrestling with the same feelings as you are now.  There is no magical guarantee that all your dreams would be fulfilled, that all your problems would be solved or that you would be in a much more enviable position.  Chances are great that you would look back on your unexperienced present circumstances and pine for them as well.  In addition, you have no idea what different challenges you would be facing had you taken the other road.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking that everything would be much different. 

2.  Obsessing on what might have been robs you of the present moment.  Your unrealistic daydreaming suspends and sabotages positive and progressive thought about today’s circumstances and how to make them better.  It leads you to hate, not to love.  It causes undue frustration instead of calm reasoning.  It roils you into profound discontent instead of seeking out peace and harmony.  It makes you cantankerous and nasty instead of developing an amicable and uplifting personality.  You cannot see wonderful possibilities because you are always thinking about missed opportunities.

3.  Cursing the present and wishing you would have chosen something else is an indictment against the will of God.  Even if the road you did take was in contradiction to the will of God, you need to understand that the will of God is redemptive, not permissive.  God deals with you as you are, not as you should have been or could have been.  My favorite story of the Master Weaver comes from the Orient where tapestries are the special products of many villages.  It is said that the Master Weaver sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by his apprentices.  Whenever one of them makes a mistake, he brings the work to the Master.  The old man studies the tapestry until he figures out how the apprentice can incorporate the mistake into a greater design so that it would appear to the one who purchased it that it was supposed to be that way from the beginning. 

What you didn’t do is not important.  It has no present value.  What you did do is where you are.  Concentrate on that.  Pour yourself into the present.  Your present is EVERYTHING!  You will never find happiness in making yourself sick over the road not taken.  If you ever find happiness, peace and love, it will be on the road you now travel.