The road not taken

In keeping with the topic of change and impermanence, I’d like to take a closer look at one of the most quoted poems of all time. I refer to the “The road not taken”, a poem by Robert Frost that is more commonly, and mistakenly, referred to as “The road less traveled”. The mistake stems from the portion of the poem that is most quoted -

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Shorn of their context, these lines hang in the air like some vacuous inspirational slogan, vaguely self-congratulatory in tone. Here, look at me, I took the road less traveled by, and look where it got me, they seem to say. And indeed this is the most accepted meaning of these lines. It is precisely in this sense that these lines have been quoted in wall hangings and self-help books, in greeting cards and wrapping paper; they have been repeated and reproduced until they have been leached of any semblance of their original meaning. Even the most profound truths will be reduced to inanity by endless (and mindless) repetition – witness the “Serenity Prayer” – and so it has been with this poem as well.

Frost himself had described the original poem as complicated and “tricky”, and to a thoughtful reader, it is still a gem of contemplation. Here it is in its entirety:

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.

In the context of the entire poem, the last three lines seem to say something altogether different. The poet is wistful, almost melancholy, as he weighs his choices. He knows the two paths are not really different, they are just as fair and worn about the same, yet he is forced to make a choice. He justifies it with the thought that he will come back to try the other path another day but almost as quickly discounts it; knowing in his heart that way leads on to way, and that he will never be back.

So it is with life; every day we make a choice to tread a particular path, and that makes all the difference. Yet perhaps it is not so much the path we walk on, but how we choose to walk that makes the difference – whether we go shuffling along with our eyes cast down, or whether we walk tall, with our head in the clouds, treading lightly. As if walking on air.

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