“Whenever you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

This is probably some of the best life advice I have ever come across.  I’m always pondering my experiences – how I could have done things different, and what life would be like if I had.  Always contemplating how I can reframe my reality to better myself as a man.  Reframing one’s reality is not an easy thing – but it is a powerful skill once developed.

I’m going to go ahead, take a big leap here, and declare that my upbringing was rather sheltered.  I might be tipped off by things like my dad altering toys to remove violent objects (I really only remember one…a green army car that *had* a gun on it), or my mother not letting me even watch the Simpsons – though addmitedly, the early seasons a bit more rowdy than the latter ones.  I listened to classical music, played the piano and then the violin, played soccer, and did my homework like a good little boy.  Though my academic success started going downhill relatively early in high school (in terms of grades), I don’t think I missed a single day until 2nd semester senior year.  You see, it just was not in my perception of reality to act beyond official boundaries.  My reality had been constructed out of relatively (with respect to this messed up world) mundane qualities.

After high school I went on to college – mostly because that’s what you do next right?  The flow chart would look like:  High School -> College -> Life.   If only I had realized that life isn’t a flow chart.  So onward to college I went, chosing to study whatever it was that I was already doing (math…what else would I chose?).  The truth was, I didn’t care – and I couldn’t see that.  I had entered a world completely separate from previous life and my severely boundaried reality couldn’t handle it.  More critically – and this is something I can only see now – is that I was unable to determine this at the time and therefore unable to take any action.  My disgust for a strictly standardized learning regiment – thoroughly backed up by faculty who didn’t care - quickly devolved into some form of mental collapse. 

**I should interject here, and say that there were a few teachers in high school who worked their asses off and cared harder than many of us deserved – and for them I am thankful for keeping my sanity and providing me a good foundation to reframe with**

On with the story shall we?  Some of you may know that I went to college for a semester and then took some time off.  Now you know why.  Not necessarily the nitty gritty, but the overaching sense of things.  Following my inevitable downfall, I had a pleasant period of mentally stagnant bliss.  Ok it probably wasn’t that nice, but I basically just let my brain reset.   Then, with much thanks to my parents, I started taking various classes (note: action).  I ended up taking pretty much a flavor of everything, not really knowing what I was doing, simply that I was sort of testing the water here and there to see which area had the perfect temperature for me.  I didn’t come to any sort of realization until I found myself working in a subject that had me so completely and utterly engrossed that I could spend 4 hours without realizing 4 minutes had passed.  *bing* Some kind of light goes on and its hovering over a sign pointing in two directions.  Actually for me, the light was only over one part of the sign – that particular moment was blindingly clear for me.  So I decided with absolutely crystal cognizance that I would go back to Reed (note: Action).

I could keep going on and on here, as I ended up latching onto this formula.  I would come across something I wanted to do, and because it fit with the way my brain functioned, I would just do it.  To put a nice shiney bow on the whole read:  I started to chose action as a driving force.

If you find yourself in a stagnant point in life, or if you cannot decide on something, consider this:  Place yourself on a fence and look at both sides.  Upon which side of the fence does action lie?  Always take that fork in the road.  It is always the things you don’t do in life which you regret.

So to bind everything together in the spirit of this blog, I need to make some reference to new orleans.  I could say many things about how people get stuck in ruts and refuse to step out of their boundaries blah blah blah.  All I am going to say is this:   Consider everything we have discussed in terms of New Orleans, why we go there, what we do there.  Put your life on one side of the fence, put new orleans on the other, and then ask me what this has to do with anything.

-JR

PS. You may be wondering about the openness of all this.  It’s because I’ve recently taken one of said forks, and have restructured my perception of reality.  You are all now in MY world.  Which means I can say whatever the hell I want with little repercussion (oh no! bad words in a church blog! who reads these things anyways?).  How fun.  I should say the fork is that I am applying to grad school for this fall.  It’s amazing what a change of reality can do.