Making a Choice

The following is a poem which appeared on the 2nd mid-term:

 

Each of us begins with a garment of different weave and design,

Which in time's passage becomes worn, washed, wrinkled,



stained, stretched, shrunk, faded, frazzled, fragmented

and hung up.

That's the way it is my friends.

But we are equipped with a capacity to mend

and with a colorful variety of patches.

It's up to us whether we wind up tattered, tangled, torn and tossed,

Or become a pleaseing example of patchwork artistry.

It's a choice.

And that's the way it is my friends.

The test writer cited it as a poem by Elmer Adrian; however, I got online and found the poem was written by Michelle Marie Williams. I need time to find out its real writer.
Part of this poem is about making a choice. This reminds me of Mr. Hsieh Kun-shan's (謝坤山) life attitude: "Life can be dark or bright. I choose it to be bright.

This morning I came across a passage in The Secret:

"A person who sets his or hier mind on the dark side of life, who lives over and over the misfortunes and disappointments of the past, prays for similar misfortunes and disappointments in the future. If you will see nothign but ill luck in the future, you are praying for such ill luck and will surely get it."

"LISA NICHOLS
You are the designer of your destiny. You are the author. You write the story. The pen is in your hand, and the outcome is whatever you choose."

All these materials weaving together gave me an idea that I could teach Unit 12 "The Road Not Taken" before Unit 11. "The Road Not Taken" is a very popular poem by Robert Frost and one of my favorites. I agreed with the poet that some of our choices will make a big difference in our life. The following is the poem:

The Road Not Taken
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.