Take The Fork

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One of my favorite quotes and a guiding principle of my life is this: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” — Yogi Berra

from a muppets movie. used without permission

from a muppets movie. used without permission

First: for all my young friends, Yogi Berra is not a yoga practitioner named Berra. This Yogi, number 8 in pinstripes, was a catcher for the New York Yankees. He also was a dispenser of weird wisdom. Here, sample a few morsels:

It's like déjà vu all over again.
You can observe a lot by watching.
It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.

As for that fork in the road, wouldn’t it be nice if it was as simple as just “take it”? Maybe I’m an indecisive person, I know that I like to make decisions intuitively, but maybe I don’t trust my own intuition. Some might say I lack faith. Maybe I’ve just grown weary of people blaming God—as in, “I prayed about it and this is the way God lead.”

Some time back I read the memoir of Cheryl Strayed called “Wild”. Recently I watched the movie based on the book. A line in the movie caught my attention.

“There’s never been a fork in my road.”

At first a forkless road sounds pretty good. Not to oversimplify, but that sort of seems to be the theology of my Calvinist friends—the predetermined road would have to be a forkless one, right?

Even though a fork-full road, has questions, and quandaries, and chances for choosing wrong or right, I still prefer that road. It just seems sweeter somehow. Take my marriage: many years ago I asked my Amazing-Missus to marry me. It was like I put a fork in her road. Now in my strange theology, I do believe that some things are just meant to be, like our marriage. But still, she had a choice and she chose US!

See isn’t that a more beautiful story than the one that says our lives are mapped from beginning to end without forks?

These days, as the road stretches closer to a horizon, the forks seem to come up less often, but seem more daunting when they do. But I’ll keep praying, keep trusting, and keep truckin’, because as the great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain't over till it's over.”