There’s this poem I keep coming back to lately. I ran across it one day in a book and
have found the words pretty hard to forget. It goes something like this:
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 Frost
What an incredible piece of poetry, right? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I have to say, Frost hit the nail on the head when it comes to this feeling. I’ve found that especially since graduating high school, I’ve made more of these fork-in-the-road decisions than I can remember. In fact, purely in terms of my own decision making, these past three years have been the most transformative of my life. The ten before that were even more so, but that was not of my own doing. We all have the power to choose which path to take, and though the road less travelled is a difficult journey at times, ultimately it is rewarding - indeed, when looked at with the right mindset, the journey itself can be the biggest reward. However, as the wistful voice of Frost might indicate, the one downside to this notion is that every journey comes to an end.
