#51: Choosing the road less traveled.
A life of your own is worth the unknown.
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Two years ago, my son was at a crossroads.
Connor was deciding which college to attend: William & Mary, his dad’s alma mater, or Colgate, the relative unknown.
We’d spent countless hours strolling through W&M’s leafy trees and colonial Williamsburg setting over the decades. We’d taken pictures of the kids in the faux stockades, eaten at The Cheese Shop more times than I could count, and watched Mike’s face light up as he told stories of his college days. His deep affection for W&M — and how it had transformed his life — permeated our family story. And since Mike died seven years ago, visiting that campus always felt like giving him a hug.
Colgate was a blank slate. Thrown onto Connor’s list by his college counselor, we’d visited just prior to the pandemic. Other than a few hours of frozen fingertips and hat head during a February tour, we were clueless. Tabula rasa, baby.
Connor had just over a week to choose.
“I think I need to make this decision by feel,” said my notoriously data-driven and risk-averse son. Wide-eyed with surprise, I silently nodded.
“We’ll do a blitzkrieg visit to both,” I offered.
That mid-April Saturday, we folded ourselves into his Subaru at the crack of dawn and took the six hour drive north to Colgate. One stop at the Scranton IHOP for chicken and waffles with strawberry syrup, and countless songs on his playlist later, we pulled into the empty visitor’s center parking lot.
No official tour, just a masked-up meander through the campus, sneaking into open buildings and walking the just-greening quads under bare-limbed trees. Like a transistor radio, we let the signals from the college permeate us, catching snippets of words, views, vibes. Connor rested his head back in the passenger seat as we headed home.
“Well, what do you think?” He said.
“Nope, buddy, this is not about what I think. This is 100% your call.” I replied.
“Well, let’s see how I feel after our W&M visit.” Then he was out like a light. I steered our little silver bullet home.
The following Tuesday, we got on the road for a much shorter drive down 95 South to Williamsburg, Virginia.
By 9am we were walking the familiar paths of the W&M campus in its full-bloom spring glory, daffodils laid out like yellow carpets along the paths.
Repeating our drill, we meandered through several buildings and the library, mostly in silence. Forty-five minutes in, we were headed into yet another historical brick hall when Connor turned and faced me, reaching down to put both hands on my shoulders and look me in the eye.
“Mom, what do you think?”
“Connor, we’ve been through this, it is not about what I think, it’s about what you feel. And we’ve been here less than an hour!” I replied, exasperated.
“Mom, no. Seriously. You need to tell me right now. Where do you think I should go?”
With his shoulders back and his gaze boring into me like a laser beam, I could tell he’d decided. I just didn’t know what that decision was.
“Ok, Connor. I give up. I think you should go to Colgate.”
A look of shock enveloped his handsome face. Followed by a carbon copy of his father’s megawatt smile. Then he picked me up in a huge bear hug and swung me around.
“I thought I was going to have to fight you for it!” He exclaimed. “I’m going to Colgate!”
Fast forward to last weekend.
Connor and I are eating pizza at an airbnb a mile away from the Colgate campus. I came to cheer him on during a frisbee tournament and stayed to breathe in the autumn leaves.
Between bites, Connor mused, “Can you believe we made the choice to go to Colgate all those years ago?” And I I told him I absolutely remembered it, but I think his point was, “Look where we are now! Whoa!”
Connor is crushing it at Colgate. I’m impressed by the way he both trusted his gut when deciding, and then fully leaned into the decision once he had made it. He’s not daydreaming about how the grass could be greener at W&M. He’s at Colgate, and he’ll grow the damn grass himself if he needs to.
I’m enamored watching my son step so fully into life. As much as I talk about making the most out of our time on this random space rock, my kids continue to teach me how to do it better.
In this case specifically, how to not let my age and apparent responsibility get in the way of living as vibrantly as I can.
When we are young, decisions feel like they are ours.
It’s about what we want in the moment and how far we dare to dream into the future.
But as we get older, it feels less and less like we are making decisions for ourselves. Rather, we’re making them for our kids, spouse, job, lifestyle, aging parents, etc. And if we don’t choose wisely, we won’t be able to support our kids, spouse, job, lifestyle, aging parents, etc.
Cue sleepless nights, worrying about which road to take. Kids have the boogeyman under the bed, adults have big decisions. Dress up as that for your Halloween party.
Choice is supposed to empower us, but the older we get and the higher the responsibilities pile, the more it drains us instead.
It’s the exact opposite of watching Connor on his post-choice path, running full speed ahead like a bank robber with a sack of cash tearing down the street.
Yes, the stakes are higher as we age. But we interpret this as a reason to play the small game: Don’t risk it! Don’t make the out-of-norm choice! Shun those who do… (Are they dangerous or do they just make us jealous? Don’t think too much about it!)
We get so focused on what we have to lose. We make the “safe” choice. But life isn’t safe. We can try to make it more so, but it rapidly becomes a case of diminishing returns. Connor didn’t make the safe choice, he made the bold choice. He chose to have more room to grow into himself, rather than living in the shadow of Mike… even if that shadow would have offered comfort and nostalgia.
I’ve written before about the little heroism required to live your life, rather than someone else’s.
Even if that prescribed life seems happy from the outside, I think we simply crave more than a paint-by-numbers existence.
Watching Connor erupt into the best version of himself in these last two years is confirming my suspicion. “Getting by” just isn’t enough. We need to see who we can become and what we’re truly capable of. We weren’t given life to be a lemming. We choose life to feel alive.
And being slightly scared is part of being alive. It’s why (in my humble opinion), Robert Frost took the road less traveled. And it's why even the most impeccable pro/con list doesn’t lead to a good life. We need to feel like we’re living a little on the wild side…
Which is just a fun way of saying that our choices — and the life they design — must be true to each of us. Maybe we can’t even explain why we want to go that way instead of this. Doesn’t matter. It’s our life.
This requires, above all else, faith in oneself. Faith in our decision-making skills? Well, kinda. But more faith that we’ll make the best choice we can with the never-complete information we have. And then we’ll embrace that path and make the most of it. Because even if it wasn’t the best choice (which we’ll never really know amidst the endless, multilayered, domino line of life anyway!), now we get the challenge of turning it into something grand.
And, let me tell you, from the glimpses I’ve gotten, it can be so very grand.
The reality is that some choices are ours, some are not.
But what we make of them always is.
I tell people about my escapades since losing Mike — solo trip to Patagonia for my 50th, empty-nester world tour with Greenland glaciers, blah blah blah — and they look at me with… well, I don’t know what. Awe? Fear? Who cares. Because I get to look back at the last seven years and think, “Damn. I miss Mike, but what a vibrant life.”
When my world got blown up by loss, one option was to lock down, bolt the doors, stave off any further pain. The other path, the road less traveled, was to blow the doors off my current life. What’s the worst that can happen? Oh, hell, it already did.
And really, if anyone has a right to play small, it’s Connor. His dad died. But he doesn’t. He shouted down the worry and anxiety that plagued his young life, then yelled WATCH THIS as he launched himself into the unknown.
Next stop for Connor? New Zealand for his spring semester. We just finished filling out his paperwork last weekend. And you can bet your ass I plan on visiting him there.
Play it safe or see the world? Seems like a no-brainer.
Full steam ahead,
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You are living proof of this Chris - and we all get braver by watching your journey...thanks for being a model for the road less travelled!
Sue, thanks for this week correspondence.
Our oldest daughter recently asked how we were able to raise them with all the things that go on during life, and I replied, “ a lot of juggling!
Best of luck to you, Conner , and family as he goes toward Colgate!
But as we get older, it feels less and less like we are making decisions for ourselves. Rather, we’re making them for our kids, spouse, job, lifestyle, aging parents, etc. And if we don’t choose wisely, we won’t be able to support our kids, spouse, job, lifestyle, aging parents.