Directions.

Sometimes there seems to be thousands of them: ‘right’ ones, ‘wrong’ ones, socially-sanctioned ones, ‘crazy’ ones, fabulous ones, fruitless ones, loop roads and dead ends.

Other times, it seems there are only a few to pick from.

Yet, even if there are only two options, you still have an important choice to make about the direction to take your life in.

This excerpt from Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken captures this beautifully:

…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(you can hear him read the entire poem here).

So what about you? What might make all the difference to your life’s direction?

When it comes to picking your path, how do you actually go about making that choice?

Standing at the crossroads of any major decision, what helps you know which road might be the ‘right’ one for you?

Been stuck at the traffic lights lately?

Did you happen to notice where your mind traveled to while you were stopped stationary?

Were you frustrated? Annoyed? Wishing you didn’t have to ‘waste’ your time waiting like this? Angry that you have better things to do, better places to be, and yet, here you are, crawling along in traffic?

It’s interesting to keep track of what our thoughts are doing in these unguarded moments. To notice what we’re thinking (and perhaps also to muse about what we’re not thinking at those times).

Albert Ellis, one of the pioneers of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) talked about a thing called ‘low frustration tolerance’, or LFT. He identified it in the 1960s (and he also called it ‘can’t standitis’).

I was on my way to the train station, bound for work, when this street art caught my eye. A tortured-looking soul, trapped in a shirt and tie, with an almost zombie-like face aflame.

It made for quite a statement, as people filed past it in the early morning light to fill the station, all of us wearing our various ‘uniforms’ for work: business suits and skirts, briefcases, blazers, the ‘right’ kind of shoes. All dressed-up, knowing exactly where we’d go…

And, in fact, some of us seemed to have gone there already – to have mentally arrived at work whilst still standing on the platform. Work-focused mindsets checking watches; efficient faces turned expectantly in the direction the train would soon come.

Does this sound familiar to you? 

‘The Truth,’ we’re told, is ‘out there.’

Unassailable.
Rational.
True.

But what if it’s more complex than that?

What if there are multiple truths in our lives? Multiple versions of our stories, many ways of seeing ourselves (and others), myriad points of view, and countless ways of understanding events?

And what if we don’t even have to choose ‘the right one’ among them?