Blindfolded at the Crossroads

Some days I am unsettled and disjointed. My crystal ball is murky. My faith, fate, and future are in question, if only to me. I am blindfolded at the crossroads again with no idea which path to take.

Remember the story of the gladiator who must choose between two doors? Behind one is freedom and behind the other is a lion ready to kill him. The situation is complicated by the woman who tells him which one he should choose, but even more so because he does not really know if he can trust his life to her.

We are all, I believe, like that gladiator. The choices we make are heavily influenced by those around us. What we don’t know is if the decision that they want us to make is for our benefit or for theirs. Consider a parent helping their son or daughter select classes for high school. The parent undeniably wants what’s best for their child, but other things come into play. Mom really wants her daughter to be a doctor, while dad thinks engineering is the way to go. Dad was the captain of the high school football team and wants to relive his glory days again through his son. Pragmatic Mom wants excellent grades for a better shot at college scholarships to help ease the financial burden. Can Junior and Juniorette trust their lives to that parental advice?

I find that my family is guilty too. Mom thinks it would be great fun for Reed to be in the FFA because he loves animals so much, but he’s a really a motor head. Dad wants him to learn to fly, but his backside is firmly planted in the seats of ground bound vehicles. Channing is too young for such nonsense, but Mom's pretty sure horses figure prominently in her future.  Dad hides his wallet.

What advice on the future should we give? On the one hand, I wish I knew then, what I know now – that every decision from your first day of high school forward either expands or limits your choices going forward. On the other hand, what I really wish was that someone could have helped me define realistic goals – without the parental baggage – and helped me determine for myself the direction I wanted to take.

Flash forward some decades, and here I am trying to decide what path I need to take from where I now stand. I have, for many years, wandered all over the sky looking for the right place to land. Sometimes I just make a quick fuel stop as that particular airstrip doesn’t appeal to me as a long term prospect. Occasionally I do find a nice place to land and spend some time there. But invariably I get restless after a while and feel the need to move on. I’ve never really found the one place I belong. And all the helpful people around me give advice – “go here and do this, I really liked it and you will too,” or go over there and do that, I always wished I had done that.” Despite their best intentions, it is always colored with their own desires and experiences which are so foreign to my own.

So here I stand, still blindfolded, the paths into dim futures yet unseen, knowing I am the only one who can choose my next direction. My worst fear? Decision by indecision.