“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
It seems that no matter how far I’ve come, the ghosts of my “adoption past,” unbidden, come back to haunt me. What to do about the attack? I realized that it might be a good idea to do some re-naming. Instead of “Blue Monday,” I’m choosing to call today “Poetry Monday.” The choice of whether or not to go with the painful memories or to push through them and then move on is always available. Pushing, shoving, dislodging, climbing up out of the depths. Along those lines, I offer you a poem that has provided me with great solace throughout the years…
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
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.
Do you recall roads not taken in your life? What choices and twists of fate have shaped your destiny?
The Goodbye Baby 