‘Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all,’ drones the old saw. But in this instance, the cliché is wrong, utterly wrong. Better to have chosen a different life, a quite different path, than have placed yourself and those you love in harm’s way when early reflection and thought could have advised you differently. I repeat: do not mistake desire for compulsion. Those that do nearly always fail, at great cost to themselves and those around them.
