It’s strange how one’s path through life is revealed. Some people never find one at all, and devout themselves to wander around, nowhere-bound. Others step on the path they find most useful and force themselves to walk, walk, walk… even if their feet are bleeding and the landscape they’re finding is not the one they want to see; after all, it’s the path to being Somebody.
How much does one have to fight to be happy? Is happiness the top of a cloud-laden mountain or a cozy cave just found along the way? Is happiness a distant echo that happens to be your own voice projected all around the world or a tickling whisper on a loved one’s ear? Sometimes I think about Great people in the world, people we remember for their great/terrible deeds. I wonder if those have been people who haven’t found themselves comfortable in their Normal Citizen suits, and have taken an extra step to find their happiness. Maybe those people see satisfaction on the top of the mountain, and as they strive to find it, the rest of the world sees them climbing and acclaims them. There are some individuals who never seem to find their right way, and yet they live their lives in a suit that doesn’t fit. I wonder, what do they think when they die? Do they have a revelation of what they should have done?
A generally accepted ideal is that of being a Somebody, having your name printed in books and newspapers, having a recognizable name and face. Fame and fortune are the great parameters people use to measure Happiness. However, what if on your way to the top of the mountain you stumble into the coziest cave ever? What if you definitely couldn’t leave that cave for some other occasion, for times when you’ve already come down from your trip to the mountain top? How do you know happiness will be the fire waiting for you at the end of every day instead of your name engraved in gold on the book of The Important History?
I used to write stories and poetry thinking of the possibility of reaching the top of one of many mountains, maybe the highest (what do you know)… Then I found my favorite pair of eyes and a pair of hands flying like hummingbirds, telling me not to go… I found my cave… How can I keep climbing when the fire is right here?
How do I know I’m not supposed to get blisters in my hands anymore? Maybe it’s all up to me. Maybe I’m the one who controls my own dreams. I’m the one who decides where to go, hoping not to fall on the way there. Maybe I’m not that ambitious, after all. But who cares! So many cave dwellers have become mountain conquerors for those who have sat around them to hear their stories…
I don’t know what I want. Now that’s an easy thing to say. If I think about it hard enough, perhaps my real desire is to wake up every morning and, when I remember what kind of life I’m living and what kind of people are walking by my side, to smile the sincerest of smiles.
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
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
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.
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken