One Path.

I have been thinking lately about how there are basically infinite options and pathways in life, but we personally will only know the one we chose to go on. I seem to find myself saying, "what if I had done this differently" or "what if this didn't happen, where would I be?", etc. It seems like a lot of people go through points in their life where they question "what if?" and the thing is we will probably never know the answer to those "what if?" questions because they are just hypothetical. I have been trying to avoid thinking like that because there is really nothing I can do to change the past (to my knowledge at least). It's just very mind boggling to think that one small detail in our life could have a ripple effect and change our path in life completely. Maybe that's why I am so indecisive in most situations. I almost always have to weigh out the pros and cons and make sure I'm set on a decision before I make it. This holds true for things on a small scale to a much larger scale. I don't want to regret my decisions, so I take a long time to decide upon things.
I'll never know what could have been if I went to a different college or if I had said something differently or if I decided to turn left instead of right while driving lost. It bugs me that I'll never know, but I just have to live with it and always think about my actions & decisions.

I also notice how so many people take the path most traveled and then have to learn from big mistakes (whcih turn into regrets) that they made while traveling that path. They could have looked at the people who made mistakes before them: friends, family, etc. If you see the mistakes of those people and know that you don't want to end up the way they ended up, then why would you follow them? Why would you take the same path to basically the same fate?
I guess I just have a much different mindset than most my age. I always am thinking, if/when I were to have kids, would I want to tell them "don't make the mistakes I made" or would I want to tell them "do what I did"? I'm not saying I would tell them to follow my every move, but I mean "do what I did" as in stay true to yourself, stay out of trouble, do good in school, do your best, be a good person in various aspects of life, and so on. If you don't want to tell your kids, "don't do what I did", then why are you doing that stuff now? It's sad because some people will never learn until they face the consequences of their actions and sometimes that's still not enough. I don't need to make the mistake to learn from it, I've seen many others make the mistakes and I've learned by saying I DON'T want to be where they are.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.