The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
 |
| Courtesy of Papaija2008 www.Freedigitalphotos.net |
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 marked 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.
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 marked 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.
This has forever been one of my favorite poems. I guess because I have often wished I could travel two, or more, paths at the same time and I have always had a curiosity about the choices we make and the roads we take in life. Every day we face choices we have to make. Mostly these are the easy ones to make - toast or Cheerios, regular or decaf, stick to the diet or blow it off. Other times we face more difficult choices and we pause to think about them before making a decision - buy this car or that one, get a pet or not. And then there are the other life altering choices that we make - take this job or that one, move to another state or stay put. With each decision, or crossroad, we choose to take our lives in a certain direction. And for fun, because I'm a geek, sometimes I think about the other road. And because I'm a story-teller, I think about the life I might be leading had I made the different choice.
I have no regrets about the life I have so this in no way should be taken as a question of regret. I love my life and every decision I've made has put me on this path for which I'm very glad because I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful Little Man. Still, as a story-teller I can't help but to be a little curious. What if I had gone to a different college? What if I majored in something else? What if I had bought a different house? What if I had taken that vacation? What if I had gotten a different dog? What if I had taken a different job? Curiosity is a wonderful thing! And such fun!
 |
| Courtesy of thanunkorn www.Freedigitalphotos.net |
Then I start to think about a really cool story I could write about parallel universes and other cool things that take literary license by me and suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. Sci-Fi isn't my genre but it would be such a fun exercise to do it. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll take this path. Or maybe not and I'll just think about it for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment