Roads Not Taken

Posted on November 25, 2002 in Attitudes

Artichoke Heart got me to thinking about roads not taken….There’s something about those intervals when one has nothing but time on one’s hand that leads me to forgo reading, writing, and other constructive activity for looking back over the map, for seeing where one has been and try to guess how I came to choose that blood vein route that is my life.

My questions are legion. Like why did I give in to parental pressure and not major in English as I had wanted? Why did I choose to study anthropology under an undergraduate advisor who eschewed literary approaches for statistical ones and descriptives that reduced human interactions to flow charts? If I had gone to U of Pennsylvania or UC San Diego for my graduate work, would I have avoided collapse and failure in my first year? Would I have descended into the madness that now requires me to take Effexor twice a day or was my life just a string of symptoms, like drunk bumps in the middle of the highway? Should I forget about the “what ifs” and the hows?

I sat in on a beginning writers’ group the other night where the leader suggested that a possible cure for victimhood was to write journal entries about the things you have achieved. I shudder at the thought because it sounds like bragging. And then there’s the greater threat: the opinion of others who can bring a hush to a thunderstorm by simply saying “So what?”

All I can say is “I’m what” and though the response is nonsensical given the nature of the question, it is the best answer for my soul’s sake.

To tell the truth, I hate the “road not taken” metaphor and crave something of my own that won’t just be a parrot of Robert Frost.