"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"
There are several science fiction stories about space navigators who can see all the possibilities of a ship's travel and can choose the fastest and safest one. One mistake can lead to disaster.
We lesser mortals can't even predict what effect our choice of lunch may have on our future.
I or my wife had made many little decisions that have had a profound effect on our life, an effect that we could not conceive of at the time.
When I was already in college, I made a decision overnight to run for the presidency of a subdistrict of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. I had once declined to do so, but something led me to change my mind. I had a friend nominate me at the meeting the next day, and I won against the listed candidate. Probably because I was male. This was the late 50s.
Once in office, I started dating the elected secretary of the subdistrict. She had voted against me, but after almost 50 years, two children, and three grandchildren, she doesn't regret either decision.
After a couple of years at Univac, I had made an attempt to get a transfer to Norway, but my supervisor didn't follow through on whatever needed to be done. Sometime later, my wife said, "If you still want to go to Europe, don't let us stop you," meaning herself and our kids. So, I made another attempt and we wound up living in Europe for six years.
While we were in Stockholm, my wife struck up a conversation on a subway with another American. We visited each other's houses and were given a standing invitation to visit them in their cabin in Brimson, Minnesota.
When we finally moved back to Minnesota, we spent most of our vacation time in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, but that became less frequent because we never seemed to co-ordinate our vacation time. One year we decided to take up the Brimson invitation over a long weekend. The story is longer yet with other little decisions, but we wound up buying property in Brimson.
Once we had built a cabin on our property, we found that the four-hour drive was becoming tiresome. My wife's employer had an office in Duluth and had been encouraging its employees to work from home whenever possible. So, she asked for a transfer to Duluth.
As usual, there are more little decisions, but one I made was to do more writing. And so here I am, a regular columnist in a local alternative paper and a sometime blogger.
