choices

tonight the thought of choices has been swimming around in my head. every day of our lives we are faced with choices. in all honesty, just about every thing we do is some sort of a choice starting with the choice to get out of bed in the morning or to hit snooze for another 9 minutes. some choices, in the grand scheme of things, are rather insignificant...'do i wear these pants or that skirt?' while others might have a bit more of an impact on your life...'do i eat the apple or the muffin?'
with each choice we shape and define our future. some of these choices are honestly rather simple to make. we are guided by the long term effects of where each choice may lead. do i go to work today or do i stay home? the answer to that depends more on how much you want to keep your job and less on your desire to stay home. unfortunately, not all choices are this simple, the path's aren't always clear cut so to speak.
in these cases i am often reminded of the robert frost poem "the road not taken". frost chose the road that was less traveled by the others. not to say he created his own path, if that was the case the poem would read something more like "two roads diverged in a wood and i took a left at the old tree stump and climbed over some rocks and beat down some bushes to blaze a new trail". instead he took the road that wasn't the norm but still clearly led somewhere. fingers crossed of course that it didn't take him in to a dead end or off a cliff since my experience with woods is that their signage leaves something to be desired.
still what about those of us that are stuck at a fork in the road with no real knowledge of where either path might lead? they aren't paths that others have tread before. both are filled with their own obstacles to overcome and very little light shining through the trees to advise you of the dangers that might lie ahead.
many times in my life i have felt myself at this fork *cue green day song*. in my head it plays much like a scene from a movie. always fall (probably because woods always seem prettier in the fall), and i spend countless hours deliberating each path. pacing in front of them, sitting on the ground and throwing rocks or pulling up grass while mulling over the options that lie ahead of me. i will be the first to admit that sometimes i have chosen the wrong path. definitely should have gone right instead of left at the last turn. but then again i am directionally challenged in the non-metaphorical sense so it only comes to reason that i would be metaphorically directionally challenged as well.
still with my good and bad choices alike i find that i tend to make these choices much harder than others. after making my choice and moving forward in that direction my mind begins to hesitate and question my judgment. did i make the right choice? what would have happened if i chose differently? did i really think through all of the possible options? at times i think i have to will myself not to turn around and change my mind when there is really no reason to change it but fear.
tonight i realized that it has been a while since i have had to stand at this particular juncture. sure i have had to make some difficult choices but honestly there has been something to help guide me toward my choice be it the potential outcome or just the pure adventure of one choice over another. it made me wonder, is it that i am more confident in my choices or is it that i have chosen a path that has made life a little easier to tread for a while?
either way...tomorrow i will wake up, get out of bed (after hitting snooze about 4 times), put on that brown skirt, grab my apple, and head in to work for the day. celebrating the simple choices but embracing the possibility of some more challenging ones that might be on the horizon.