Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…..
I used to carry Frost’s poem in my wallet, that’s how much it spoke to me. Today I realized–obviously not enough.
I was reading an article in Mother Jones on the best lines of Ginsberg’s Hobby Lobby dissent when it suddenly hits me: way back when, in the day as they say, Mother Jones offered me an editorial job. But I would have had to move to San Francisco–which would have meant leaving my jerk of a boyfriend. So I declined.
It takes my breath away to imagine even for a second how that job and that move would have changed my life. Maybe I would have gone on to explore the full extent of my intellect and ability as a journalist. Who knows what would have happened if I had lived in the cauldron of San Francisco during the 70s and 80s.
But I didn’t, and whether the me-today thinks the me-then was a silly twit, the fact is every experience I’ve had because of that decision has made me who I am today. Who I like.
Besides, I’m aware that the fantasizing about what if’s is almost always based, at least in my case, on the assumption that a change of venue would have created a change in the core issues of my personality. So if I had taken that editorial job at Mother Jones, my ADHD would have stayed behind in Los Angeles. Yeah, right.
