Melissa Reddick

The Poor Man’s Folly – to seek gold because he believes gold is the only way to live a good life. What happens when he becomes rich this way? He is surrounded by everything he ever wanted yet enjoys none of it. Why not? Because it is empty. Hollow. Meaningless. It represents a dream that didn’t come true, really. It acts as a reminder of every decision he made to put money above everything else, never questioning this understanding that it was THE ONLY WAY to live the life he was imagining.

There is an interesting test in life that I believe every human has to undergo eventually.

“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”

Excerpt from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

Two roads, two ways. One high, one low. One well traveled, one avoided.

Except the way that I am imagining them, you are standing at the base of a mountain. One road leads up to the top – a road to glory – and the other leads down to the valley down below.

Ok, so neither example contains the imagery of what I’m trying to describe, but they’re still coming to mind as I write so I thought I would share them anyway.

Let’s put those, and “Our House” by Madness aside for now, and focus instead on something slightly different.

You are standing at the base of a mountain. One road ahead leads up, up, up, around and to the top of the mountain and then back down again into the valley and then up another mountain.

The other road leads down into the valley first, all the way to the basin at the bottom, and then up and over the mountain just beyond it.

At the top of the mountain there is glory. Honor. Recognition. Everyone can see you’ve made it. You can plant your flag.

Maybe if this metaphor translates into the real world, climbing the mountain is everything everyone wants to do in life. Buy the house, get into an awesome career that comes with huge paychecks and raises and bonuses and perks, get the nice cars, get married, have kids. It’s all of the external things that you, and everyone who knows you, can point to and say “wow, he really did something with his life. He made it. Look at him all the way up there at the top of the mountain. Amazing! Incredible! Inspiring! I’m so jealous of him and his family, look at them all together and happy.”

It’s the glory. It’s the fame, no matteer how small-town it might be. It’s the “he made it” energy that everyone’s looking for. But here’s the caveat – you don’t get to stay at the top. You have to climb down eventually and head down into the valley.

The valley represents everything you think it does. Despair, desperation, poverty, loss, separation, being alone. No one wants to walk the valley with you. Everyone has to go through it eventually.

Each path comes with it’s own challenges, it’s own rewards.

Which path are you choosing first?

The road down into the pits of despair or the high road with all of it’s accolades and recognition?

Choose wisely.

If you want to know what I would choose and why, I’ll tell you. But first, I’ll give you a hint.

Here’s a hint…something I didn’t mention but that the divine in you can connect with. Something you’re already aware of on some level, even if you don’t remember it now.

What is the purpose of having a choice at all? If the benefits of the high road are obvious and the detriments of heading down to the valley are too, what is there to decide?

Well, did you ask yourself what the benefits were of taking the road down first?

There are many, but none might be obvious at first.

If you’re curious what they might be, that can be a third part of your journaling prompt.

• Which road are you taking?
• Why?
• What are the benefits to the path that you would choose first?

I would choose the low road first.

Why?

Less to lose, for one. The higher you climb, the farther you have to fall. If you take the low road, you’re already heading down.

The metaphor gets a little bit tricky here, but let’s try to stick together for this one. It might seem harder to climb up a mountain, but it is actually harder to climb down. The momentum can really sneak up on you when gravity is working with you. It requires far more control to go down than up.

Also, at the bottom of that valley is every hardship imaginable. The one(s) that you end up stumbling through are the ones that prepare you to enjoy what the top of the mountain has in store for you.

If you go for the glory first, it’s really a trap. Just like the fool at the beginning of this story, you can’t truly enjoy any of it. You don’t have the context, you don’t have the depth, and you already know the road ahead consists of great loss and challenges. What is there to enjoy about something you know can be taken away and knowing you don’t have the ability to defend it?

The road down the valley is the path of no attachments. Everything gets stripped away. The benefits of this are many. My favorite one is that you get to learn to enjoy what little you have as though it is a lot. Context matters greatly in our ability to appreciate what God gives us in this world.

It is hard when you have a choice in the matter right off the bat. Most people seek comfort first and hope it lasts forever, without a shot in heaven of making it happen the way they want it to. Only those of us who are willing to face hardship first can actually enjoy all the good that life has to give us.

Fear of losing everything you worked hard for gets stripped away when you’ve already lost everything and had to rebuild from nothing. You develop the ability to build, the confidence to protect, and the awareness to know what it takes to create it again should you have to. You actually develop discernment through this process rather than remain a fool.

Fools who achieve glory before they’ve put in the work lack a few things. Integrity, discernment, awareness. They’re ungrounded.

I’d rather be a fool who has nothing, with everything to gain, than a fool who gains everything and then spends her whole life fearing when it will be stripped away.

The second one sounds exhausting.

Hard work amounts to something when you take the low road first.

What about you? Are you team #highroad or #lowroad? Choose wisely 🙂