Welcome to Spring.  Time to Plant.  My life it seems is in continual Spring.

“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”  Mark 4:4-8

I observe stuff.  I try to remember stuff.  Some stuff I observe, and use as a life tool.  It may eventually add value to my live or enrich the life of a friend or a stranger.  Some stuff remains stuff forever.  No real value.  I am no different I suppose from anyone who is an observer.  And truly I believe that “Jerry Mathers as the Beaver”, though not a necessary life fact will come in handy someday during a Trivia Bowl.

Recently it has come to my attention that I choose to observe friends.  Not people watch, I am not a good watcher of strangers.  But I truly love to watch my friends.  Up close, from afar, I love to watch.  I am not a voyeur.  I am a student.  A student of choices.  As I age, I am moved by the choices my friends make.  I wonder why.

I am not referring to which shoes do I wear with this outfit kind of choice.  I am talking about “this is where I put my time, my effort, my resources kind of choices.”

My favorite “new” document/study.  “The Road Not Taken”  Robert Frost, 1920.

For your reading pleasure, I choose to share, should you choose to read…

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, 

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I would like to believe that I have many friends.  Not Facebook style friends.  Friends I just love.  Friends I choose to love.  Some are easy to love.  Some are just a flat out pain in the ass.  But I choose to love them.  And my life is richer because of it.  I really, really love a few of my friends who live on the road less traveled.

In fact I even ask, “Do you understand much of what you go through today is the result of choices?”  The fact is, I have friends who truly ignore that there are consequences associated with choices.  I have done the same.  But here is my observation.

Choices are the seeds of life.

Pondered choices, considered choices, Well those are often the producers of a great harvest.  A harvest of enrichment.  Reactionary choices…. not so much.

And that is where I choose to stop today…

And I choose to continue this discussion again soon..