2 Ponderings

There’s a quote by Cormac McCarthy that I think about a lot.

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

-No Country For Old Men

I have found it remarkably useful in getting over things. Everything happens for a reason, by comparison, has never done anything for me. If anything it provides greater discomfort, because it makes bad luck no longer bad luck, but a personalized punishment from God. I think the expression implies everything happens for a good reason, but I still do not find that convincing. Says who? Prove it. One example where you faced bad luck which in hindsight now actually looks like good luck doesn’t prove this claim whatsoever. It proves these things happen. It doesn’t prove they happen for any reason. And then what about the 100+ times you’ve faced bad luck where the revelation that it was actually good luck never occurred? This is where I struggle with faith in general. It is difficult for me to accept anything purely out of faith. I envy people who can, but I cannot.

I need reasoning.

I like McCarthy’s quote so much because it’s optimistic with logic. It informs me that although you can make fair inferences, there is no possible way to ever know if you’ve been lucky or unlucky. We are utterly oblivious to the ultimate what-could-have-beens and there will be no opportunity to compare or contrast in this lifetime.

We will never know if we took the wrong or right path. So is there really any sense in dwelling on it? See, this is how it helps me get over things.

And that brings me to Robert Frost. I believe “The Road Not Taken“ is the most misunderstood poem in American history. Here it is:

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

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.

Most people read this poem as advice to take risks or follow unconventional paths—that doing so leads to success. I’m not being snobby because that’s exactly how I interpreted it before I went to graduate school to study poetry.

What it’s actually saying is essentially the same as McCarthy. Well, I guess I should flip that around because Frost came first. Anyway, it’s saying something that I find both haunting and comforting. Your decisions in life will absolutely affect—nay—create your future. It’s easy and weird to find the moments in your life where if you had backed out of something, or gone a different route, your life would be completely different. But you will never know if you chose the right route. Maybe you would have been rich and famous but you went to the other college instead and it never happened. Maybe you’ve been inches from death three separate times and a stroke of luck that you didn’t even realize was a stroke of luck saved you. Maybe you’ve done everything right.

You’ll never know.

[Illustration by Rembrandt. “Young Girl Asleep“ 1655]