And That Has Made All the Difference

In looking back we often see where we took one way instead of another⎯and what we might have done differently. This, in one sense, is what happened to Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Carol. He saw where and what he would be if he continued his present course.

But we don’t need to be taken on tour by an unearthly messenger, as Scrooge was, to see, in some respects, the same thing. There is all the experience of the past, the laws, the principles, the wisdom of the ages. There is all of history which has proved and disproved many things. And regardless of cynical thinking and pandering to undisciplined appetites and inclinations, seeking to set aside the laws of life is finally fruitless⎯for in a very real sense the laws of health, the moral laws, the basic laws of life are self-enforcing.

If we want to arrive at a place of peace and self-respect, of competence and accomplishment, we can choose the road in the same sense as a traveler decides where he wants to go, and looks at the map and follows the signs to get there. He is going to arrive at where the road he is traveling takes him. If he is traveling the wrong road he is going to arrive at the wrong place, unless he changes direction.

We have life to live. We have a choice of many ways to live it. Whether it is education, competence, family, friends, respect, peace⎯whatever it is we want⎯we had better study the route, we had better learn the rules. Peace and happiness don’t come by rebelliously traveling the wrong road. This from Robert Frost seems to summarize the subject:

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.¹