Forks In The Road

Where to go? What to do? Decisions, decisions, decisions. We've all been there, right? Our journey through this crazy thing called life has delivered us to an unexpected decision and we find ourselves unsure of which choice is best for us to take. From the point of our conception to the very last breath we will take in this life, our lives are filled with decisions that we may not expect when they present themselves.

Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing

-Optimus Prime-Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

How many of those forks in the road did you choose the correct road? If you're like most, hindsight being 20/20, perhaps fifty percent is a good answer. Some will most likely answer with a far less comfortable average. But like I said, hindsight is 20/20. So rather than looking backward, answering the question of what would I change, or do differently, living in the moment is better, even moving forward. History should serve as a guidebook for today, tomorrow, and beyond. Treat the past, like you would the dead and anything else like words of a writer.

Coughlin's Law: Bury the dead. They stink up the joint. As for the rest of Coughlin's Laws, ignore them. The guy was always full of shit.

-Bryan Brown: Doug Coghlin Cocktail (1988)

If you're going to find yourself stuck, dwelling on the fate of things, things that have already come to pass, then prepare yourself for a lifetime of misery and grief. Missed opportunities are gone, like road signs in the mirror. Even if you could go back in time and grasp onto those opportunities, they'd never play out the same way. The decisions you make, from today forward, should be what you focus on. As humans, we are all creatures of impulse. Our impulses push us to fulfill our baser needs. As long as we are creatures of impulse and creatures of need, then we're always going to be prone to mistakes. It's that dammed free will that gets us every time.

Keep being the author of your own story. Never let anyone else write it for you again.

-Jennifer Donnely, Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book

The most recent fork in my road may have been the ultimate test of my free will. As a single father at the age of twenty-five, I took a job as close to what I wanted as I could get at the time. Twenty-three years and change, I was still doing the same job. I really never intended it to be that way, but a certain degree of comfort comes with having a skill set that is in short supply. While I wanted more from my career, I found myself unable to completely play the game. I once had a boss that told me, "Don't worry kid, it gets easier being the bad guy the longer you do it. You'll learn to live with it." So, after twenty-three years, raising a child, living the best life I could live, and seizing what opportunities I could along the way, I was suddenly back there again, living in that moment.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Aaron Ekhart/Harvey Dent-Batman: The Dark Knight

It strikes me funny sometimes, the life I have lived. The old saying, life imitates art, continually comes to my mind. It also strikes me funny that the saying or quote that comes to mind the most is one from the character of a District Attorney. My professional life before January of 2020 was spent as a Deputy Sheriff. The downside to the job, many of the things you see and are forced to do are things that don't come naturally to good men. It gets murkier and murkier, seeing which side of the fence you're on, especially when your leaders aren't the men they used to be. So, I refused to be the bad guy, refused to play the game, and walked away. I was at a fork in the road, questioning what I could live with anymore. Looking back at that day, I can think it through from every angle, see the writing on the wall, and still think on 9 out of 10 points that I'm better off. But, I was starting to fit the second part of the quote, I lived that way long enough that I was seeing myself become the villain.

We can play the time machine game all day long and in some ways it is healthy. In some ways, it is a self-deprecating exercise in introspection. An example, from way back in a different life, was when I started to examine my existence in the world. Whys, hows, what-ifs. At sixteen years old I wanted to become a Marine-Biologist. I had the grades, I had the ability, the potential, and the passion. I certainly could have gone onto college, gotten a master's degree, and done the doctoral studies. So, what happened? I won't blame a person on this planet for what I've done, right or wrong. So, the time machine. If I could go back in time, what would I change first? There are so many things that threw me off the track, put me on the wrong fork in the road, and yet, the biggest of them came from the smallest of places. Like a stone's throw landing in the water, causing a ripple and changing the picture, I played the time machine question and found the point in time my ripples started. It all started with the ringing of a phone-believe it or not.

That phone call put me at a fork in the road. It was a mysterious phone call, from a complete stranger, that had hunted me down. It wasn't exactly as nefarious as that may sound, and at that time in our lives, I was giving credit to the caller for putting in that kind of leg work. It was flattering, six months after seeing me in a crowded room, to hunt down my information and call me up. From there, things get progressively more and more complicated.

Life will throw you a constant set of hiccups that keep your road rocky, your journey arduous, and your travels filled with bumps and turns. On paper, everything we do can appear perfect. We can enter into things with the most honorable of intentions, with our hearts pure, and our minds focused. Without warning, things go asunder. We find ourselves ripped apart by circumstance, that paper begins to...

When it all seems like it's burning to the ground around you it's important to remember that you're not the only person in life that has gone through things that seem insurmountable. We've all faced them, from time to time. Certainly, some face those events that will break them down more than others will, because luck plays a major part in life's victories and its' losses. That's alright, because the strongest of us out there, walking through life every day, are survivors.

We face the things others can't, don't want to, or run from. Fate deals us hands that people cringe over, find unbelievable, and wouldn't want to play. The survivors get scared, feel beaten, even on the edge of surrender. Then, by surprise, they get back up for the 100th time, dust themselves off, and keep going until they get it right, holding onto hope for that one big break or that one special day that everything comes together. While it may not be easy, it may feel unfair at times, that's what survivors do because that's how winning is done.

So, no matter what turn you take in that road, remember that there is someone coming up right behind you, and if you look way down the road ahead of you, you'll see that little dot that is the guy that took it before you.

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