The Road not Taken

Shirat Devorah recently published a post entitled "Rectifying the Past"। The image above her post contained the following words.

"Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened"।

The words reminded me of the poem "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost which we all had to read in high school.

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 kept 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.

The other day, a close friend asked me the question, "Do you ever regret choices you made in the past?" I responded by telling her about an article I read in the Jewish Press by Cheryl Kupfer over a year ago entitled There is No 'Road not Taken'. To read the full article, click here.

Through the years, I have made various decisions that have affected my life and sometimes, I become mired in thoughts of "what if and if only". Cheryl Kupfer's insights helped me accept that it is useless to get bogged down in recriminations over past choices.

She writes about the choices we make in life, "Whatever our choices - no matter how satisfied, successful or accepting we are of the outcome and the actuality of our lives - from time to time we wonder "What if," "Why did/didn't I," "If only" etc. This is particularly true for those who regret their choices, those who spend their waking hours (including their sleepless nights) grieving, those whose conscious moments are burdened with the heavy weight of sorrow, anger, frustration and bitterness, beset with the relentless belief that they were cheated. They go through their days mired in the quicksand of regret, unable to move forward, and bogged down by useless self-recrimination for the choices they ultimately made.
But they needlessly chastise themselves or those who influenced their choices, for the poem's premise that we had another choice - the road not taken - is not a Torahdik one.
This is because the path a person ultimately finds him/herself on wasn't chosen; it was the one they were meant to be on - as decreed by Hashem.
Everything is bashert. It is Hashem's will that decides our fate. It is a will that we must accept - no matter how difficult or unfair we feel our lot is."
".....With acknowledgment that Hashem is behind the steering wheel of our journey and that the content of the days of our lives are min haShamayim comes sweet relief that we are not to be blamed for our situation - for our individual pekel was tailored for each of us. "