The Road Less Traveled

What got me thinking about Robert Lee Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was a reunion with old friends. I was the least successful amongst a group of strong individuals. That shouldn’t bother me, but …

I always thought Frost’s poem was about buoyant individualism. On reflection, I see it’s also about regrets. So, somehow, the poem manages to be about how both things can co-exist.

Looking back at my own life, I see how choices I made were the right decision at the time, and yet, also were “wrong” because I could have been more “successful” had I chosen to, for example, be more selfish. A lot of carers will relate to that. Then, there’s that last line, “And that has made all the difference”. The difference, it turns out, wasn’t about “success”, but about what was better for OTHERS. And then also, for me as a human being.

But now, there’s one more thing this poem delivers. The title is “the road not taken”. Not “the road NEVER taken”. Frost “doubted if I should e

ver come back”, but after going down the road less traveled, what’s to stop me doubling-back at a more convenient time? Could this blog be the start?

And be, again, one traveler, long I stood …

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) poem in the public domain