I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear
Yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go…

When you reach a certain point in life, there is a lot of looking back and thinking. I was thinking the other day about my dad, how he didn’t make his 69th birthday and how I have already blown past mine. I was thinking about Silvio who also didn’t make that number. Retirement is funny in that it is simultaneously freedom on a magnitude I cannot ever remember having. My earliest recollections are of going to school, thus being on the clock and having tasks to perform in a timely manner. So from the age of about 6, which is when that started, until the very end of my 68th year, I have spent my life “on the clock” in one way or another.

Those thoughts, along with an email received today from a friend, about a relative, brought me to the titular vision. I do remember various forks in the road over the years, and in most cases, I was temporarily frozen, not knowing which way to go. I did, in each case make a decision and each decision created more forks, and more roads and yes, more fear. Now, there really is no more fear, though there will always be forks.

The most recent major forks were whether to fully retire from 47 years of teaching and then to sell, pack and move 900 miles from everyone and everything we had become close to…talk about frozen with fear.

I found most often when in that decision mode the best approach was to treat it like entering the ocean….make the choice to go in and run into the waves headlong.

That brings me to the idea of looking back…after 47 years, what exactly did I leave? Did I leave the planet a better place than I found it? Did I build anything that has legs? Was I able to plant any seeds that might grow and flourish? I guess, unlike creating music, literature, buildings, parks, that I’ll never really know.

I’ve turned the professional page, and have no intentions of reopening that tome, but the latest crossroad is one that actually does not have me frozen in fear, every day I smile and realize how lucky I have been in so very many ways….healthy, an incredible spouse, amazing kids, grandkids, a life my father dreamed of but was never able to actually fulfill [largely in his case, as I recall, it was succumbing to the fear he faced about making significant changes] and a future filled with more promise than worry…

When I made my decisions
My visions became my release.