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Content First- A writers adapative stretegy:
Currently I am working on a few areas that are of great importance to myself as well as others.
One of these areas is that of Personal Responsibility:
An image I would like to borrow is from a famous poem by Robert Frost " The Road Less Traveled By "
Frost paints us a picture with his words of a landscape which has only the muted colors and sounds of winter. His poem places
us at a crossroad where where one must choose which path to take. The whole poem unfolds what is perhaps a moment which however
portends the significance of a lifetime.
I conducted a brief internet search and did not find the poem which conveyed the image which I have until now retained so
well. The image of a horse drawn ccarriage stopped in the snow perhaps a queit neigh from the horse, and the quiet snow falling.
All this as a backdrop to our author's thought's. The one line of poetry I retained:
..."the little horse, must think it queer, to stop without a farm-house near" ...
There may be a plethora nice little phrases or cliches to help us understand the concept of personal responsibility, however
having so many options and phrases may also convey that we do not really have one good sentence to neatly convey the concept.
If you are just slightly optomistic you would find yourself asking...
What fantastic opportunity or situation is G-d about to present me with!
How amazing it is that all those little so called mistakes or blunders, or bad decisions I made, is what had to happen in
order to get me exactly to the point that I am at right now.
When we look backward do ever get the chance to comprehend that the job that we lost, or the unfair hand we felt we had been
dealt is exactly what was needed to get us to this fantastic moment which we are now involved in.
I can vividly imagine a frustrated reader who somehow landed at this website saying, hey... how can that guy be so happy...
with the price of gas... the cost of living... the interest rate... the real estate market... the lack of opportunities...
and ... ...
This is exactly the person that I am trying to reach. Look around you... what are you blessed with ? Are you hungry, cold,
or do you lack a safe place to lie your head down upon at night. Don't we all take these basic fundamental things of life
for granted just about every single day.....
Okay, I get the idea, I imagine the reader conceding, however take just one simple concept, I would like to share is: the
one of G-d being the conductor of this great symphony of which we are part of.
Get that image with all its implications be it the musical score, the individual notes, quarter notes half rests full rests
etc.... and then fuse it together with:
Traveling through the woods in the winter snow and seeing a fork in the road. One road is the road that you would usually
take because it is confortable, and familiar. The other road holds the unkown which could be perceived as something unpleasant
or perhaps even something good.
You have free will to choose the path, all the options are there. No one else is there in the Robert Frost poem. No one will
complain if you take the road less travelled, or the road less known.
When we choose one way over another, we are never guaranteed that will have chosen correctly, however we need to recognize
that it us (ourselves) who have chosen. We were not forced down this road, and we were not pushed to take one over the other.
We simply saw a choice, we reflected, and we took a path. Is it existential ?, is it an amazing moment of clarity?, is it
a mundane daily ritual that we do dozens of times every day?... Yes...Yes... and Yes... ... ...
Whatever that moment is or is not, is the individual person who makes the choice, and we make the choice with open eyes, of
free will without coersion, so therfore we must accept the outcome of our choice and where our choice lead us...
Personal Responsibility
Aharon Moshe (Stephen C.) Sanders
Jan. 31, 2008 @ 3pm
Passaic Public Library, Passaic NJ
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