the road more traveled

Now that I've captured your attention with a little old-fashioned humor, I need to come up with something to write about. Just kidding. I know exactly what I am going to write about.

Lately, I've been thinking about making hard choices when an easier one is presented; the temptation of that road that is more traveled, with an ending easily imagined. Why is it so enticing? The unknown is scary because it is out of our control. But the only thing controlled in the scenario where we think we know the outcome, is our imagination. And our imagination can tell us anything. So why do we trust it? Why is it more reliable than the unknown?

You know the part in Lord of the Rings when Frodo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor? You don't get the feeling he is thinking much about the road that leads there. You get the feeling that fear is nothing to him when faced with what must be done no matter what. He could have let his imagination get the better of him, but he is not of the brightest race in Middle Earth, and maybe he is too simple to really grasp what lies ahead. Maybe he is too humble to think that his imagination could be wiser than what he knows to be good.

For us humans, we are more conflicted. We have more inner turmoil because our detection of black and white is often skewed by our desire to believe that our imaginings are more than they are. This Friday, I am kind of wishing I was more like a hobbit. Or at least, that my mixed emotions would go away, and I could see things a little bit clearer. To be frank, I could do without the furry feet.

"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." G.K. Chesterton