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.
As I helped my son this week as he memorized this, one of my favorite poems, I had to giggle a little at his left brained, literal, 14 year old boy interpretation!
"We read some poem about a guy who gets lost in some woods. I think they were yellow, or something. And he didn't know where to go. "
Then as I asked him to tell me what the poem meant, at first glance, he also took the last stanza literally--
taking the "road less traveled" -- means a better choice.
It had been years since I analyzed and enjoyed each line of this favorite of mine.
When I looked at it with my son again, I remembered that Frost takes extra care to show us that this precisely NOT the meaning of this poem.
How many times does Robert tell us that the roads are equal?
The roads look about the same to the traveler standing there.
We make choices everyday.
What we DO with those choices is what is important.
So, make a choice today. Chose your road for the day.
It really does not matter if you choose an overgrown, less traveled path, a path covered in snow- or a worn down dirt road.
What does matter is what you make of the journey.
(And, when you tell your story ages and ages hence, you can embellish it like Frost says, and say you took the hard, less traveled one to make the difference.
By then, you will know that YOU made the difference.
Not the road you chose.)
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