I’ve said quite a bit in the last few days about bandwagons and how I try to avoid them, saying I’m just sort of contrarian. This video meditation based on the poem by Frost says it better than I could ever say. Avoiding bandwagons has made all the difference.
I’ve dreamt about taking the road less traveled and was warned that it would not be fun or easy, but I did it in some ways. Not that the way I’ve taken has always been better or easier, but it’s been my way, or as close to it as I could make it without cutting a brand new way with machete and strong arms.
A very different life than I might have had simply lost in the crowd. A bit lonelier, perhaps, but in some ways more satisfying, I think.
Enjoy.
“But through it all, when there was doubt/I ate it up and spit it out/…The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!”
“Oh, I kept the first for another day!/Yet knowing how way leads on to way…”
One of our first words is, Mine! And one of our first sentences, Me do!
Aren’t we supposed to become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven?
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Well, Ed, I’d like to think I did it “my way” but for most of my life I was a “good girl” and tried to do it their way for long enough that it could be a lifetime for some folks. Figured that would get me liked and maybe even loved, I suppose, but it didn’t seem to work that way. I was never an overt rebel but still, I didn’t feel comfortable with being too compliant, either, which may be why I’m almost a recluse in many ways. If you can’t join ’em, leave ’em. *G* I guess I took that less traveled road without realizing I’d made the choice – if it was a choice. Much of my life seems to have “just worked out.” Which, over the years, has fairly convinced me there’s a soul plan that works out in spite of our egoic plans. Perhaps I should say my soul did it “my way” and I was just a long, long time catching on. Maybe I can live long enough to become a child again.
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Ah, I tried to keep everyone happy while doing it my way, and that has not been a perfect answer either. I know a young woman, the daughter of friends, who seems to give not a hoot for what anyone thinks or expects. She marches to her own drummer. It’s too soon to tell where her drummer will lead her, but she looks lonely, angry, belligerent and scary. I would not want to travel her road!
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Ah, Sharon, it’s not easy to find a middle road, is it? But maybe what with seeing only two roads, there’s a third unapparent one we overlook, y’s’pose? I don’t think we can go through life with no regard for the feelings and desires of others but maybe we can learn to at least be kindly while going our own way. We’re bound to hurt feelings, I suppose, and everyone won’t be happy, but if we’re not happy, either, while doing our own thing maybe we’ve gone too far over to “the other side.”
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I find it ‘innerstirring’ that, at times, you think of yourself as having been ‘the good girl’ and yet, at others such as this, you *know* you haven’t always been… that you’ve taken your own road and assumed all that went with it.
It’s good to know you better, Sam.
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Well, Mike, it took quite a few decades to get over being the “good girl.” Mostly I tried to be “good,” (after all, how could I get love if I wasn’t “good?”) but wasn’t always good at good. Still and all, that good girl survives to some degree and she’s not so bad now that she’s a little more balanced. Maybe more fun, too. *G*
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