The Road Not Taken

The arts play an important role in our shared human experience. Through the power of music, writing, dance, and visual arts, we celebrate our victories and we mourn our losses. We reminisce and we pine for better days. We flesh out our vulnerabilities through the arts. Perhaps even more crucially, we learn to understand ourselves.

As a creative person, I recognize that one role of the artist is to provide insight into emotions themselves. A well-written song can provide clarity to a feeling you don't even fully comprehend. Sometimes, the verses of a poet can be revelatory, unearthing the truth beneath our muddled mental processes.

So, when I have an emotion I cannot articulate, I feel incredibly uneasy. This is supposed to be my territory, my expertise... right?

A few summers ago, I was a youth pastor, firmly set on a path towards lifetime ministry. Now, that path has utterly dissapearred from sight. I can hardly recognize the landscape around me. In light of that, I feel a strange sort of visceral response inside when I pass a church or see a Facebook post about ministry. It's not a matter of missing that life. It's also not simply an impulse to object to the issues in the church. It's something else...

It's the shock of beholding the road not taken.

We all have diverging paths in our history. We all have paths we chose not to pursue. It seems, though, that there is a particular and oppressive emotion that  wells up when you actually gaze upon the roads you left behind. We see this romanticized on a relational front when you hear songs talk about "the one that got away". We face the notion of what could have been, and our insides seize up like old machinery. How do we understand this feeling and what do we do with it?

I'm beginning to think that the key to overcoming this feeling is a matter of accepting life as you've lived it. You have a unique trajectory that has led you to this place. Perhaps some of the steps you took were ignorant, and perhaps some of the choices you made were not entirely of your own volition. Regardless, we must all wrestle with the reality of where we've been and how we got here.

I also think a key to processing this feeling is knowing how to mourn your losses. We accept that we can mourn people -- a friend, a family member, a former classmate. But dreams die too. Plans disintegrate. Visions vanish. It is not only acceptable, but crucially necessary to learn how to grieve the losses in your life, in whatever forms they may take.

So, as I recognize that feeling inside of me -- the unease of the road not taken -- I will choose to accept the paths I traveled, as difficult as that may be. I will mourn my losses for what they are. I will live each day seeking to understand, process, and accept my life as I try to bend my trajectory into a new and enlightened direction.

Thank you for reading On Letting Go, a blog about dealing with the wounds of the past. If you're looking for a little background on what inspired this blog, check out the introduction.  Click here for information on how you can find real and qualified mental health services for yourself or a loved one.