The Road Not Taken

One of the most famous poems of Robert Frost is "The Road Not Taken". I suppose the popularity is due Frost using simple words to convey vivid imagery and profound meaning. The poem goes like this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, 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 life, it is probably not unusual for us at one time or another to be faced with such a choice; to take the path that most people would have taken (the safe path) or be courageous enough to take the less trodden path that your heart desires. Therefore, one common interpretation of this poem is that it seems to encourage people to take the "road less travelled" because it would "make all the difference." For example, a person who is at a crossroad of his life, deciding where he should be like the average person and go for a business degree or abandon the conventional path and pursue his dream to be an artist may from reading the poem think that it might be very possible that if he is to risk it and pursue his dream, he may well succeed and reach his full potential and that decision would make all the difference in his life.

I studied this poem when I took a module on poetry in the university and my lecturer then had an alternative but very interesting interpretation of this poem. He said that actually, the poem did not really inspire or encourage people to take the "road less travelled" or that taking that road would make any difference at all! He pointed out that in the second stanza, the poet actually said that the two roads were more or less the same. Explicity, in the last line of the second stanza, "had worn them really about the same", this meant that both roads were equally well-travelled. Keeping that in mind if we reconsider the last stanza, it is possible to see a different meaning. It goes something like this: A long time ago, I had to choose between two paths and I kind of randomly chose one and now I am an old man (hence "ages and ages hence"), I must tell you that (because as an old man, I am supposed to give advice to younger folks right?) I took the road less travelled and it made all the difference in my life.

Suddenly, the poem is no longer inspiring but cynical. Since I could not have possibly taken two roads, I would not be able to know if things would have been much different if I had taken the other road. But as an old and wise man, I am not supposed to say this to younger folks, so instead I said this bullshit about what a great difference that their choice made in my life!

So back to the topic on the crossroads of our lives, perhaps sometimes we take ourselves too seriously thinking that we are at a potentially life-changing junction. We chose one path and when we looked back, be it we regretted it or we felt so glad that we had chosen that route, we thought what difference it has made. But since we had not taken the other path, how do we really know for a fact that things would be so very different? How do we know that the two paths might actually converge? Or better still, we might think the two paths to be very different from the perspective at the junction but if we can have the luxury of travelling along both paths, might we not find that actually they are not very different from each other afterall?