Forks In the Road

It’s the journey, not the destination

When you retrace your life, examining its course as a series of forks in the road, an alternate landscape emerges. At each fork in the road, you made a choice: left or right, either/or, yes or no. You probably weren’t aware of most of those binary choices, yet each of them set your path, leading to subsequent forks, more choices, ultimately placing you right where you are now. EVEN ONE DIFFERENT choice would have dominoed into a different present reality for you.

Not all forks are the same.

• Big Forks (for example: relationships, jobs) are made infrequently and set the container of our lives.
• Medium Forks (for example: exercise, diet) are choices that reinforce themselves and become self-image or lifestyle.
• Small Forks are micromoment choices that shape our experience. We make these constantly.

Think of a fork in the road you once encountered, and imagine you made a different choice. Where would you be now? If I had made the hard choice to NOT marry the man I then loved who didn’t really want to marry me, I might have saved myself heartbreak. On the other hand, I would have missed the growth and healing that came from it. Knowing what I know now, would I choose the other fork? Honestly, I’m not sure. There were good times, too.

While the forks-in-the-road determine our journey, the destination is a given. All roads ultimately lead to wholeness and healing. We are driven to wholeness just as the tender shoot of a seed is driven to the sun. Healing is inevitable.

We are not deciding where we will end up.

We are choosing what we will experience along the way.

What kind of journey would you enjoy in this life? Would you prefer a winding, woodsy path up the side of an old mountain? Or are you drawn to the warm sand along a crystal blue sea? Either is fine—both lead to your wholeness—but you do have a preference for your experience along the way. Just as you have a preference for the people you want to spend time with, the work you want to engage in, the space you want to live in, the clothes you want to wear, etc, etc, etc.

Let these preferences guide you. Let them inform your choices at every fork. They are a specific and unique algorithm coded into your DNA to point you down the path of a meaningful life.

This means two things about those fork-in-the-road decisions:

1. Move toward what brings you pleasure/joy/satisfaction/love. Grace and ease will open a path to your full expression beyond your present imaginings.
2. Move away from what brings you struggle/pain/constriction. Although you’ll eventually, inevitably arrive wherever you need to be in this life, this path comes with a cost: your time, your finances, your health, your relationships will all suffer.

Be grateful for the forks that got you where you are. You are exactly where you need to be to gain the experience and insight to inform your next fork-in-the-road choice. This one.

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