Lady Mary Wroth's Sonnet Analysis: How Shall I Turn?

Time is a river which travels endlessly in the same direction, never able to go back, you must always follow the current downstream. While we are young, we think little of the time we are given and rarely worry about using those hours spent in idle play for improvement. However, as we continue to age, we become more and more mindful of how precious even a few moments are in the grand scheme of life. Even now, as I sit here at the fairly young age of 17, I already experience growing concerns regarding how I have chosen to spend the time given to me and how I will choose to spend it in the future. To make matters worse, society continually demands a surplus of knowledge from those who wish to participate in even the most simple tasks. Events such as these cause aforementioned worries to develop from occasional nuisances into plaguing thoughts. It is in moments such as this where I find myself asking the same question that Lady Mary Wroth did in the title of her sonnet, “In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?” Unable to return to the past and too scared to run headfirst into the future, both Wroth and I find ourselves lost in a maze of our
I constantly wonder if there is something I should be doing right now to make the rest of my life better, or whether or not what I am doing will aid me whatsoever. I see the people around me spending their time finding love or doubting if they will ever find it, and I wonder if this is how I should be spending my time. Obsessing over a relationship is something I never found myself doing in my youth, but could it be what must be done in order to achieve peace? Being that I have never been in a relationship, I do not know the benefits of one, nor the consequences. As I am now, I have come to the decision that spending too much time on relationships will destroy my future. Lady Wroth said it best as, “If to the right hand, there in love I