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.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a classic poem expressing a classic human dilemma -- choice. Do we go this way or that? Do we chose this job or that one?
(For the full poem, visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken.)
I did a tarot reading for myself just before the Southwest Airlines (SWA) ramp agent position posted for SFO. The take home message was that I would have a choice to make between two very different courses of action. Each direction would take me to very different places.
BOTH were correct.
Neither choice was wrong. Neither direction would lead to a bad place for me. What an amazing place to be in! No fail options. I felt an immediate lightening of the load that making big decisions places on our shoulders.
I didn't immediately know what it meant, but when the SWA job posted, I went for it. Then when I was offered the job after passing levels of screening, I took the road I had yet to travel, but frequently daydreamed about. I took the job as a ramp agent.
If you read my previous post, you know all to well how that played out: I hung up my day-glow orange Southwest ramp crew vest knowing it was not the role for me. But the company was.
That was driven home when I recently returned to clear out my locker after a few busy weeks with my family. The biggest endeavor of those weeks was moving my almost 85 year-old- father to an independent living residence and getting him settled. Then, my husband interviewed and accepted a new job, and he and I sorted and packed up more of our home in readiness of a move for us and our two kids. All the while, I was quietly nursing a broken heart after having to walk away from an aviation dream. (Phew!)
That's life: you take the ups with the downs.
To end on a high note, my last visit at Southwest's SFO Operations was overwhelmingly heart-warming. I was greeted warmly, often with hugs and spoken hopes of me returning.
I do hope to return. SWA and the SFO station feel like my home, my people. I still LOVE the smell of jet fuel and the sound of thrusting engines at takeoff. The thrill is not gone.
The road awaits.