The Path Not Traveled....


Do you ever think about the path not traveled? I love my life but still sometimes I wonder about all the lives I left behind when I chose mine. It surprises me still the person I have become over the person I thought I would be.

I always thought I would wander more.... I wanted to be a journalist for the National Geographic, I wanted to be a tattoo artist, I wanted to join the Peace Corp., I wanted to teach English in Japan..... So many lives I left behind when I chose this one.

I never thought of myself living a fairly ordinary life. My parents led me on a journey of constant variety. In 1988 my parents packed my sister and I up in a Ford Van and we followed the Grateful Dead. My first concert ever was James Taylor followed by Pink Floyd when I was 12. We sold "dancing egg rolls" and tie dye t-shirts, We lived at a campground in California for a month..... none of these would lead one to believe that I would grow up to be such a predictable adult.

It is because of this that from time to time I wonder what it would be like to keep driving right past my exit. What would it be like to sell everything and just live day by day?  Then I remember all of the wonderful things I have in my life that fulfill me and I know with certainty that these other lives are only wonderful because they are how I imagine them in a mere moment. The realities of these other lives would surely and eventually turn into a grind and the up side would eventually plateau. It is because I can keep them as visions warm in my mind and delightful in the fact that they were paths I never actually traveled that makes them glorious. Yet from time to time I enjoy a good daydream about all the lives I didn't live and the person I didn't become.