Weep Not for Roads Untraveled

By a certain age, you have several lives.

The one you’re living. The one you planned. And the one you could apparently be living if you’d made one better decision in 2009.

That last one is going beautifully. Excellent income. Meaningful work. Knees that cooperate.

Meanwhile, in this life, you’ve opened the fridge for the third time. The situation remains unchanged.

It’s easy to admire a life that has never had to happen. You imagine the successful business, conveniently skipping the customers. You imagine moving abroad, where presumably you would become an entirely different person instead of yourself with an adapter.

Still, some opportunities really were good. You missed them.

Perhaps you were scared. Perhaps someone depended on your salary. Perhaps you were so busy getting through the week that planning a different life felt like an activity for people with staff.

And sometimes you got in your own way.

You wanted the opportunity, then ignored the email. You kept improving the plan until there was no time left to attempt it. Called it preparation. Lovely stationery.

Self-sabotage can look surprisingly responsible.

There’s a strange comfort in never quite trying. Failure would tell you something. Postponement lets you keep wondering whether you might have been brilliant.

Meanwhile, the days need getting through.

A drink to quiet the evening. A bet to make tomorrow interesting. Scrolling until everyone else’s life has been inspected and yours can safely be postponed until morning.

Sometimes a habit becomes an addiction while you’re still calling it how you unwind. Friends start asking questions. You start editing the answers.

“It’s fine.”

You’d like that to be true.

Then someone gets promoted. A birthday arrives with a number you thought belonged to older people. An old friend asks about the thing you were going to do.

They mean well. You briefly consider changing your name.

The regret that usually runs quietly through the day suddenly overflows. It doesn’t take much rain.

Linkin Park supplies this piece’s title through “Roads Untraveled.” What stays with me is the company offered near the end. After all that sorrow, there is someone willing to be beside you.

A friend who can hear the full answer to “How are you?”

Perhaps you tell them. Perhaps you admit you need more help than either of you can give over dinner. Nothing is solved by dessert, but someone finally knows what has been happening.

That can change what happens next.

We talk about untraveled roads as though they’re all behind us. Some are still ahead, waiting for decisions we haven’t made.

You might begin something at forty-three that you couldn’t have understood at twenty-six. You might leave something that has been taking more than you admitted. You might try, fail, and discover that embarrassment is survivable, although it does enjoy a late-night replay.

Some possibilities are gone. It hurts.

Others will become ordinary parts of your life. One day you may complain about the coursework you haven’t enrolled in yet, or share a joke with a friend you haven’t met.

You don’t know.

For once, that leaves room for something besides regret.

Tonight, your friend asks how you’re doing.

“It’s fine,” you begin.

Then you put your phone down.

“Actually.”