Two Roads

Okay, so one of my favorite poets is Robert Frost. I know that's not very original for a former English instructor, but there's a reason he's so famous. His poems are really, really good. And I've been thinking a lot lately about this one:

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.

More of a green than a yellow wood, but whatever.

I have heard many a student suggest that "The Road Not Taken" reflects some kind of march-to-the-beat-of-a-different-drummer, make-your-own-way ethos. The road less traveled is the better one; that's what this poem means, they say.

But they're missing the point entirely. I can't say specifically what Frost's intentions were, but it's clear to me that the poem is about the narratives we construct retrospectively. Notice that even as the speaker suggests that one road looked better than the other, he neutralizes that statement. The paths were pretty much equal, from what he could see. He had to pick one. And it is only in the future, when he is looking back, that he will create the narrative that he chose the "less traveled" road. Of course the path he chooses will make "all the difference," but as he stands at the crossroads, he cannot know what that difference will be.

T and I are standing at a crossroads, looking down two paths and trying to decide which we should take. From where we're standing, they look in many ways equal, and we cannot know more about either without picking one, which will preclude our ever taking the other.

This happens to all of us over and over again in our lives; we encounter crossroads multiple times a day. Standing at a crossroads can be an exhilarating but also, sometimes, an excruciating and anxiety-provoking position. But T and I must choose a road soon, and I'm sure there will be sighs. We'll think back on the road we didn't take. We'll know our choice made a difference without knowing exactly what that difference is. I just hope we can avoid regret and enjoy the journey along each path that we choose.