“Two Roads Diverged In A Wood” is a line from a poem by Robert Frost. The poem addresses times in our lives when we came to a fork in the road and chose to go one way instead of another.

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had chosen differently? In his book, “The Other Wes Moore,” Wes Moore has that opportunity.

Wes Moore is a decorated Afghanistan war veteran, a Rhodes scholar and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Johns Hopkins University. He has a Masters degree in International Relations from Oxford University and worked in the White House as Special Assistant to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The “other Wes Moore” is 34 years old and serving a life sentence without parole.

While in South Africa, the author received a call from his mother in Baltimore saying that there were wanted posters all over his neighborhood saying that the police were looking for a man named Wes Moore and that Wes Moore was to be considered armed and dangerous.

The coincidence of having the same name as a wanted criminal from his neighborhood haunted the author and, after the other Wes Moore was captured, tried and convicted, the author learned as much as he could about him.

To his surprise, he discovered that they both had grown up in the same Baltimore neighborhood and had hung out on the same street corners. Both had been raised in single parent homes, both had a difficult time in school and both had been in trouble with the law from an early age.

The difference is that the author’s mother, although having very little money, sent him to military school where he began to turn his life around, encountered mentors who became his role models and made very different choices than the other Wes Moore whose criminal “career” continued until the day he participated in a robbery that led to the killing of a police officer (his half-brother Tony did the actual shooting).

Today, Wes Moore works for Citigroup, focusing on global technology and alternative investments. As he noted in an online interview, “The largest point of my book is helping us all understand how little separates us from another life altogether."

This amazing book reminds us that we are responsible for the choices we make in our lives as well as the consequences of those choices.

At the same time, we also have to recognize that much of what we have is the result of pure, dumb luck. We were born into caring families who made sure we were clothed, fed and educated. As a result of our education, we met the right people who led us into our careers and our comfortable lives. We’ve been given advantages many others in the United States and the world don’t have.

So today, bless your parents, teachers, mentors coaches and friends who have loved you, cared for you and protected you from taking a road that might have led to unfortunate ends.

The other Wes Moore wasn’t so lucky.

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? LJBARKAN@THEPIVOTALFACTOR.COM

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Reprinted by permission of the author, Larry Barkan http://www.larrybarkan.com