The Road Not Taken

How about a couple of hiking metaphors today?

I’m going to semi-steal a bit from my friend Alessandra’s blog  – she posted Robert Frost‘s “The Road Not Taken” a few days ago.  I haven’t read this poem in quite a while (probably since high school), but there’s still something about it that resonates with me. 

Whether I still, like so many of us, think of myself as “different” or whether I’m just plain defiant, I couldn’t really say.  But there’s something about going exactly where everyone else seems not to be going that appeals to me.  I never really had an interest in getting to know the popular kids - I usually gravitated (and still do) to the one sitting by themself, intent on whatever they’re doing – whether reading, writing, fiddling with the holes in their pants, or just looking out the window.  I was always interested in learning the things that others didn’t already know about.

Go ahead and shrink my head and say it’s because I have an overbearing father or because I’m the eldest in my family – it makes no difference to me.  It’s just the way I am.  I’ve spent enough time trying to get to the bottom of it and mind-effing myself along the way, that I think I’m happier not knowing and just being.

And so, without further digression, here is Frost’s poem:

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.

It’s really the last sentence (5 lines) that gets me.  Along the way, I’ve constantly made choices for which I’ve been poo-pooed because they didn’t conform to what the crowd was doing – what was expected of me.  And ”with a sigh” I can’t imagine myself making any other choices.  I’m happy with where I am right now.

I switched from a Biology major to a Philosophy major in undergrad because I was more interested in the latter than the former.  I can tell you right now that I’m glad I don’t spend my days micropipetting solutions into agar blocks for gel electrophoresis.  Interesting though it may be.

That Philosophy degree led me to law school, where I was further educated in the arts of logic, argument, analogy, and metaphor.  Yet again I chose not to flow with the crowd into Pmbr or Bar/Bri classes and thence to huge bar exam testing sites.  I am not an attorney today, for which I receive no end of grief from everyone I meet.  But I’m happy today.

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.  There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage,” says Emerson.  Have I mapped out a course of action for my life?  Probably not.  Do I do so in the short-term?  Absolutely.  Do I follow them to their end?  Again, yes.

Have these things led me to riches, fame, and power?  Not yet – at least not in the senses that these terms are traditionally understood.  By metaphor or analogy then?  Maybe.  At the end of the day, I don’t suppose it matters “Ashes and dust, Maximus, ashes and dust” as Proximo was wont to say.

So are we all just taking different trails up the same mountain?

And I’ll leave you with this, dear reader - again from Emerson:  “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

***All metaphors and analogies aside, this post is in no way meant to suggest that my road is “better” than yours or that you “follow me” – I prefer to enjoy these woods by myself.***

Tagged as: Alessandra's blog, Law School, philosophy major, poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken