Taking the Fork

A bearded pilgrim without a pilgrimage was walking down a path when it forked.

He looked down the path to the one side and thought, “who knows, if I take this path I may end up coming to a village that needs a carpenter like me.  I settle down, marry a nice bouncy lass, have a brood of kids, rollick in the harvest festivals in the autumn, grumble about the scarce food with everyone else in the spring… and then when I am old, I will lie in my bed dying and think, was this all, what of the drums and bugles and clash of arms, what happened to the greatness I could have achieved?”

He looked down the path to the other side and thought, “who knows, if I take this path I may end up coming to a town where there is a sergeant taking recruits at the drumhead.  I will enlist, perform prodigies of valor, and due to  my strength and cunning and the casualties of war become an officer and a captain and a colonel.  Then I will throw off the strictures of my corrupt government, seize rule myself with my loyal men at my back, and then turn to the liberation of all the nearby countries till I am crowned emperor on the edge of the endless sea with all the known world at my feet behind me–and then when I am old, I will lie in bed dying and think, was this worth it, I left so much behind, what it is like to tell tales to your apple-cheeked children around the fire while the winter wind howls outside?”

Another man came down the path.  At the fork, he found a bearded pilgrim laying stretched out on the ground, arms stretched out desperately reaching as far as he could, one down each path.