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;
 ...
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.

 "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost. He wasn't probably talking about just one choice he made.

In fact, I think, it is at every moment of our life that we are faced with a set of choices. Sometimes we make those choices willingly, sometimes knowingly but unwillingly and sometimes unknowingly. What we forget is that those choices we made willingly, unwillingly or unknowingly  do make 'all the difference' in our life. It is not chance really, it is all about choices. The job, the place, the career, the time we spend, the friends we make, the foes that we gather, the love of our life or even all those things that we hate, in short everything about our life is made of our choices.

And yet, we always find ourselves cribbing, crying, complaining. Is that because we never realized while making those choices that we will have to live them too? Did we never realize that we design our own life? May be we never made them, may be we did not design our life. It feels a little demeaning probably, to take the credit of everything that went wrong in our life. It is easier to blame somebody - the system, our family, other people, boss, company, if no one else then God or Fate. Whatever you call it!

We are never taught to do that. Take credit that is. Probably it will be too much if people started taking credit for everything that went right as well. Where will rest of the people hide their lives then? And hence we do neither. We live a life in which our choices are m by others (not necessarily people whom we know). And then we cry, crib, carry on, accept, forget, and finally die. Easy life. Tried and tested for ages. No qualms.

There was a line is the movie Take the Lead:  "I look around this room and all I see is choices - choices waiting to be made."

We stand at different points of our life and cry, "What else can I do! This is fate. This is how I am supposed to live". We close our eyes to all those choices waiting to be made. We forget what we have in our hands - our ability to decide for ourselves. It is difficult to say what makes us close our eyes - the dread of the unknown or the love of the known. May be neither.  How do we then sit in cubicles and decide for our clients, our juniors, our friends, our family but cannot decide for ourselves? It doesn't matter how small or big the choice is -  the food, the job, our career, whether to fall in love or not, whom to fall in love with, whom to marry, how to live or rather how to die...

After all if something goes wrong, there should be someone to blame! Why take the risk! Isn't it?