Which Path

Since we only get to set foot on the path as we trod it one step at a time, and cannot ever re-trace the path and take the different forks, to say that another way would have been better is only speculation.



“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.”
From Robert Lee Frost's "You Come Too" 1916:

Now as much as I love Frost, this assertion that taking the road less traveled made all the different could only be know if both roads had been traveled at the same time and the results compared at the end. Each decision made opens up a completely different set of choices from which to chose than another decision would allow. The only way to know which path would be the best path would be to walk them all and compare the outcome.

Alas this cannot be done, thus we are left with making the best decisions we can at the time with the information we have available to us. That another is “wasting” his life is a personal opining that really states nothing more then the observers disapproval of how that person is living their life.

To claim that another caused one to waste their life is to remove the responsibility from that one for the decisions that they made to live the life they lived. If we are free beings, and are not coerced into a decision by force then the good or bad that comes to us because of our decisions are own responsibility. If we are not free beings then this speculation is pointless because then we would have no choice in the path we tread.

A path is a path because many have followed that way, had none followed it, it would be naught but a direction with many obstacles in the way. Our various religions are paths that have been trod by many before us, atheism is another path that some follow, but few of us get to trail blaze a path. Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha, and Ron L Hubbard are four of the few who have. Most of us track along following the way others have made. Some of these paths are so old nobody can be said to have blazed it, Hinduism for example. As to which past is the best is a matter of faith, not knowledge.
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Rexx