The Lives We'll Miss

Everyday we are faced with choices, some have a relatively minor affect, whereas others can be life changing.  The job we choose, the partner we choose, the friends, the country and place we decide to live.  So many choices and so many difficult decisions.
How things may have been different if we made a different choice and wandered a different direction.  One choice leads to another, which further branches seeking out possibilities and alternatives to what we know now.
Someone once told me that there are no right answers.  Whatever decision we make, we'll never know how the other choice would have affected us, where it would have led and who we would have met.  Anything we say after this decision is pure speculation.
To make a choice and to stick with it for better or worse is perhaps the best course of action but also so very challenging.  Indecision is a damnable beast that is sure to play havoc with your health and happiness.  There are no right answers.
Perhaps things could have gone better, maybe they would have but there is no certainty or solace there.  Only torment.  Make a choice, live with it, learn from it.  Wallowing is sure only to wither your health.

I think of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.
'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / and sorry I could not travel both.'
In the end Frost takes one route, he makes his choice and celebrates those good things that stemmed from that decision.
'I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference.'
Make a choice and follow it.  Think of all the positive experiences your path brings, there isn't enough time to follow them all.  But there is no sense in thinking over things that could have been.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery.  It doesn't stand to reason to worry.  Be glad your have choices, all too often there may be none, no alternative and we are compelled to act and to follow a single course of action.  Helpless.  When your hand is forced it can be a bitter experience, so too can consequence.  No one ever said that the choices your made were easy, there were probably tears at some point, clenched fists and gritted teeth, broken hearts and furrowed brows, harsh words and sighs of frustration.  You may be able to revisit past decisions, retracing your steps and starting over but whatever your choice, whatever happens, you'll handle it.
'Oh I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted If I should ever come back.'