Dawning Realisation...

I feel like today has been a very strange day in terms of my emotions. I feel like I may have been walking around in the dark for quite some time, actually, but light is starting to appear and I feel like tonight I've stopped being paralysed emotionally and have taken more than just a tentative step in a certain direction.

The Road Not Taken

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

Robert Frost

For a while I was standing at the cross roads, anxious that my decision would make 'all the difference' if wrong, as well as if it was right. But something really struck me today about one of those paths... something wonderful and glorious... I think happiness awaits! I think, in fact, one path will lead me off into more random wanderings, and the other path will take me back to the path where I am heading in the direction I want to go.

anyway- I am in a mood for poetry now and I was thinking about this next one a lot lately. It is by Susan M. Coolidge and is from her book "What Katy Did", which is really the first book I read that got me into 'the classics'. This poem stuck with me and parts of it often play in my head.

"IN SCHOOL.

"I used to go to a bright school
Where Youth and Frolic taught in turn;
But idle scholar that I was,
I liked to play, I would not learn;
So the Great Teacher did ordain
That I should try the School of Pain.

"One of the infant class I am
With little, easy lessons, set
In a great book; the higher class
Have harder ones than I, and yet
I find mine hard, and can't restrain
My tears while studying thus with Pain.

"There are two Teachers in the school,
One has a gentle voice and low,
And smiles upon her scholars, as
She softly passes to and fro.
Her name is Love; 'tis very plain
She shuns the sharper teacher, Pain.

"Or so I sometimes think; and then,
At other times, they meet and kiss,
And look so strangely like, that I
Am puzzled to tell how it is,
Or whence the change which makes it vain
To guess if it be--Love or Pain.

"They tell me if I study well,
And learn my lessons, I shall be
Moved upward to that higher class
Where dear Love teaches constantly;
And I work hard, in hopes to gain
Reward, and get away from Pain.

"Yet Pain is sometimes kind, and helps
Me on when I am very dull;
I thank him often in my heart;
But Love is far more beautiful;
Under her tender, gentle reign
I must learn faster than of Pain.

"So I will do my very best,
Nor chide the clock, nor call it slow;
That when the Teacher calls me up
To see if I am fit to go,
I may to Love's high class attain,

And bid a sweet good-by to Pain."

xxxx