December 17, 2015
My abdominal muscles hurt too much to stand comfortably for more than 10 minutes. My arms feel like they are going to fall off, or at least I think I might like them to. And my shoulders, well they were too sore for me to stay asleep this morning, waking me before my alarm.
So, all in all, a job well done!
During a time of year everyone is desperately trying not to get sick, I’m trying my damnedest to do the opposite.
Oh, Bring Us a Figgy Pudding
No! No more! Why must it go on? The singing. The sweets.
I mean, they go for like two months! It soaks into every aspect of the day, from the music you hear everywhere you go, to your decor, to your plans for the weekend, to your finances, to your beliefs, to your diet, ect, ect, ad nauseam.
(Seriously I’m feeling ill.)
Not to say that the whole “peace on earth, and good will toward men” ambition isn’t worth two measly months. I’m not actually green and furry.
However, by the end of the season -I posit- that there are few of us with the temperament to be as excited as six year-olds going into the week before Christmas. Instead, we tough out the last stretch, get slightly excited about Christmas eve and day, before throwing the tree on the burn pile the day after.
…What’s that smell? Do you smell plastic burning? Oh, I forgot it’s not real again!
The Road Less Traveled, and Other Lessons from the Land of Frost
So let me present you with something to read that is definitely not about Christmas. Not pro-christmas. Not anti-christmas.
Not. About. Christmas.
Moving on.
The Road Less Traveled
Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, is almost 100 years old, and for almost as long has been used as a heroic motif that we ought to venture our on our own to live life differently. Arguably, [99 year old spoiler alert] this is not at all the message of the poem. However, we’re not exactly poetry aficionados then are we?
Whether or not it was Frost’s point, taking the road less travel, going against the mainstream, venturing out on our own, resonates with us deeply. It appeals to our adventurous side. It seems the right choice to make. On some scary level we look around, and know doing what everyone else is doing can’t be the best way.
Enter my holiday diet, and exercise plan.
“But, but, but…” my girlfriend stammered, “what about all the goodies, and holiday meals!? It’s like the worst time to start a new diet.”
I wasn’t worried. I had it all worked out. It’s one of those plans to eat whole foods, and slow-carbs six days of the week, with one day of “goodies.” Besides, there was one other reason that this wasn’t the worst time, but actually the best time.
“Everyone gets ‘fatter’ over the holidays,” I said. “Then they complain, and try to work it off. So to avoid that, this is the exact time I should start a good eating plan!”
If you do the same thing as everyone else you are going to end up in the same general proximity. If you look around, and find you aren’t so fond of where everyone else is at, you are going to have to do something a little different.
The Road Not Taken
You may have noticed from the link, that the title of Frost’s poem is “The Road Not Taken,” not the popularly remembered, “The Road Less Traveled”
Every moment is a choice. Every choice is, in one moment, a decision for one alternative, and against another. We may wish it wasn’t so. We may like both of the choices before us. However, wishing doth not make a truth. There is always a road not taken, and usually no chance to revisit it.
The ideas we let permeate our daily existence always displace others that could have been there. Selective attention and muli-tasking, or no, we still only have so much attention to use. It can not include everything, even on the best days.
When we choose eggs for breakfast, we decide against pop tarts. When we choose pop tarts, we are choosing against eggs.
We are always choosing against something, to it’s time to get over it, and let go of that feeling of missing out.
The Difference
The poem ultimately ends with the speakers predictive lament that someday he’ll tell a story about this decision between two pretty equal options. He’ll sigh in retrospective confirmation that his decision was important, and that he picked the right choice.
Popularly we interpret this triumphantly. The speaker made the correct decision, and he is better off for it. He acted boldly, ventured out, and achieved.
However, as sure as we are in this, the speaker seems less so. He sighs as if thinking privately to himself, that had he chosen the other road he would still be there touting his choice as the best, and a job well done.
And he’s probably right. Dan Gilbert, a ‘happiness expert,’ say’s that according to his research we have a strong tendency to look back our choices and be happy with them. (I think it’s also worth noting that the science seems to say that people really are happy with those decisions, as opposed to acting happy. Our brains our amazing assets!)
The Real Difference
Frost’s poem, after going back and forth throughout, seems to end on this fatalistic, and helpless idea. It didn’t really matter. The speaker was going to feel the same anyway. What will be will be, and all that. He could have chose either road, and the outcome would seem the same…
Only he didn’t take either road. He chose this one!
And while the destinations may seem the same, because we mortals are not given the gift of seeing the ends of both long roads, they are not!
I believe in taking the road toward my dreams! If I screw it up, and take the wrong road, I’m consoled to know that ignorance of the alternative will be my consolation prize. That I’ll still look back thinking I made the best choices, if not with some lament over what could have been.
However, that doesn’t make them the same.
To look at the roads with indifference, believing them the same is to stop walking.
Never stop walking. Never stop trying. Act boldly, and independently. And which ever road you chose, chose according to your dreams!
-Michael Speck