WE ARE WHO WE ARE

This past weekend I was honored and privileged to have been able to make a quick but long (1800 miles or so) to Elkins, West Virginia, to baptize my grandson Evan. As I traveled from here to there, I had to drive through some of my old stomping grounds in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Arlena’s box of eclectic CDs provided a wonderful variety of background music as my mind remembered those days long past in that part of the country. It was a good time going back in time.

   When we go back in time, we can remember all the highways and byways we have taken over the years. We are also able recall those highways that we did not take, the forks in the road we came to and chose one over the other. We may remember why we made the choices we did and we may not. Perhaps there were times when we made our choice based on the best information we had available. There may have been other times when we basically flipped a coin and set off down the road that won the toss.

   In our reveries we often wonder what might have happened had we not set off down the roads we did. We wonder what the road not taken would have been like had it won the flip of the coin. We will never know. What we do know for certain is that we would not be where we are now had we taken a different road or a different set of roads somewhere in our past. 

   What we also know is that while we all can go back in time, we cannot go back. We are who we are because of all those roads taken and not taken. Wondering what life would be like had we made other choices may by fun, but it is also futile and certainly not fulfilling in the least. In fact it is simply frustrating. Besides, who is to say that we made wrong choices along the way? Who is to say that the roads we took were absolutely the right ones for us at that moment in time?

   The truth is we believed they were. We never set off down any road saying to ourselves that we were making a big mistake, that we should have taken the other path. And if we did, and if we made a mess of it down that road, we have no one to blame but ourselves for our foolishness.

   But I digress. It was fun and it was even somewhat fascinating to remember all those roads I took and the reasons for taking them. I do know that if I had not taken each and every one of those roads I did, I would not have been on the road to Elkins to baptize Evan. I would have been somewhere else. For no other reason than Evan can I say that I am glad I took all those roads I did. I would not change a thing. But, of course, I can put names to many of the other reasons why I am happy, blessed even, with the choices I have made over the years. I’ll bet you are, too.

   Not to be too Pollyannaish, yes, I wish, we all wish, that some things had turned out differently down some of those roads. Not every road, even roads taken with the best intentions, lead to paradise. We’ve all been to hell, found it, when we expected to find heaven. But the truth is that all those heavens and all those hells we encountered, all those people we met, and everything that happened to us down all those roads has made us who we are right now.

   We can look back in anger, look back in regret, look back in joy, look back in longing. We just can’t go back. We cannot live in the past. We can only live in the present as we look to the next fork in the road in our lives. We are who we are because of the roads we have taken. We will become who we will become because of the roads we will someday take. Let’s enjoy the journey with fond memories of the past and wonderful and blessed hopes for the future.       WJP