Travis and I were sharing a bottle of wine on the outside deck of a tasting room on Stearns Wharf, the pier in Santa Barbara, a couple of weeks ago.  It was a perfectly beautiful afternoon, nearing sunset on the end of our first full day, so we were still settling into our vacation groove.  Taking a breath.  Unplugging a bit from the concerns and responsibilities that occupy so much mental and emotional space in our regular routines.  Enjoying the moment.  Appreciating California.

We started talking about the fact that each of us, separately, years before we met, had planned to move to California. I actually was on my way there when a car accident in Texas sent me careening in a different direction. Around the same time, Travis had been exploring the West, with an eye particularly on the Bay Area. To the surprise of both of us, we found ourselves here in New Mexico, instead, which has been home for 30 years.

In this reflective mood, we toasted the roads not taken — the paths of what might have been, the California dream in which it is unlikely that we would have ever met, the road on which life would have been utterly different in unimaginable ways.

Then we toasted the roads we did take. We toasted the thousand twists of fate, the million decisions that have comprised our lives up to this point. This good life, for which we are grateful, and which still includes exquisite moments on the California coast and elsewhere, together.

Travis poured us each another glass and we toasted the roads we might take from this point onward. The possibilities arrayed before us — what we can envision as well as everything unknown. One of the things I like most about travel is that it always invites me to inspiration and wonder. Experiencing a taste of life elsewhere, looking at it from different angles, interrupts some of my default assumptions and habits, and I can glimpse a world of potential, progress, and hope.

We ended up toasting all the roads. The ones we took and the ones we didn’t, the ones we might and the ones we likely won’t.

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Recently, I read a letter by author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson, which he wrote to a friend in 1958. Both men were about 20 years old at the time. The friend was struggling for a sense of direction, feeling aimless, longing for meaning and purpose, wishing to pin down some goals for his life. Thompson responded that because every experience changes us, specific goals aren’t very useful. In fact, when we get too hung up on a goal, we tend to restrict and contort ourselves trying to conform to it, which is backwards. We would do better to allow our aims to shift and evolve as they emerge out of our own perpetual becoming. He wrote:

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. We strive to be ourselves.… We should not dedicate our lives to reaching a pre-defined goal, but rather choose a way of life we know we will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary; it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.

– Hunter S. Thompson

We are being created by life and creating ourselves through and with life all the time. On the surface, or temporarily, it may seem stabilizing to declare fixed points towards which we are navigating. But the goals become less relevant as we move towards them, because we are changing on our way to them.

Look not for goals but for a way of life.

As I thought about this, I realized that it can work in both directions, forward and back — where we’re going and where we’ve been. Indeed, in every direction — the roads taken and those not. A way of life can include any road, and must account for all the roads.

It is liberating to consider that being ourselves might be the whole point — to become more and more fully us — expressive and creative and meaningful simply by virtue of our existence, in and of ourselves.

The perennial questions are: Who am I? What can I choose, right now, to do and be more myself? How might I approach these particular circumstances and conditions in a way that not only is true to my being, but actually creates more freedom and opportunity for myself and others to be? Can I look back not with regret but with appreciation for everything that has brought me to this magnificent moment of completeness?

It’s important to remember that these aren’t trick questions. We can’t get them wrong. They aren’t problems to be figured out and fixed once and for all. We’ve already achieved it as far as we’ve come, and we will continue as far as we go.

Here we are. There we’ve been. Let’s create something together.

Cheers to all the roads, my friends! I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, October 12, 10:00am at q-Staff Theater. Special music by Amy Blackburn and Steve Senn. XO, Drew

©2025 Drew Groves