A Plague of Frogs

"Elliot, what would you think if there were frogs everywhere?"  My wife Elaine asked him.  She was telling him about the plagues in Egypt before Pharaoh let the Israelites leave.

"I would love it!"  Elliot said.

"Well, what if the frogs were in your bedroom?"  Elaine asked, hoping, I guess, to convey the seriousness of this plague.

Elliot looked at her as though she was a little silly.   "Mom," he said.  "I love frogs.  I would love to have some in my bedroom."

At this point, Elaine gave up and moved on to something else.  It amused me, though, because although Elliot does love frogs, I think that having them all over the place would get old, even for him.  There is certainly a limit to the number of frogs he would enjoy having in his bedroom.

Of course, he is only five and can be forgiven if he doesn't always think through the consequences of his choices, but there are a lot of people much older than he is who choose paths -- knowing where they  lead -- and just believe that they will 'deal' with the consequences when they get there.

I have never heard of anyone choosing a path that lead to a plague of frogs, but there are plenty of other, far worse things that can result from decisions we might make. 

The problem, unfortunately, is not that we don't know what the consequences of our actions are, it is just that we think we can deal with them when they come.  The end of the path is clear and doesn't look great, but we believe that we will have enough fun on the way to make the consequences worthwhile.

In the end, the fun on the way is seldom as great as we think it will be and the reward at the end is far worse than we imagined.

The road most traveled often ends in disaster.

Worse even than a plague of frogs.