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
From “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
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.
For the longest time (mostly in middle and high school) I had been misreading (or mis-taught) this poem. Enough so that I, along with lots of other people, thought the title was “The Road Less Traveled.” I, like many many Americans, was taught to focus on those final two lines as some affirmation that doing what isn’t popular, maybe even doing what’s difficult, is what makes the difference in life. This fits well with the pick yourself up by the bootstraps notion of American individualism: we love to think of ourselves as people willing to do hard things and go it alone. This interpretation is what makes it a popular poem for graduations and life transitions. We love to believe that choosing the road less traveled may have some greater intrinsic value for its difficulty and solitude – the hero’s journey.
At some point after college, I listened to a recording of Frost reading his famous poem. What I heard in his rendition was different than what I had believed the poem to be about. I heard a sad, almost resigned, emphasis on the line “how way leads on to way.” In listening to it this way, it occurred to me that the poem wasn’t so much a celebration of having taken the less traveled path but was instead a lamentation of the fact that we have to chose in the first place. Heard this way, the poem becomes an admission that as time marches on we seldom get back to those other paths. In our choosing there is the suspicion that our best-laid plans will be forgotten and abandoned in the leafy New England woods… We tell ourselves that next time we’ll choose the other path despite knowing there may not be a next time.
Today I leave. It’s one in a series of departures. I’ll spend a few days in the Philly area and then….? This past week has been full of goodbyes: board members and co-workers, acquaintances and friends. I say I’ll come back to visit. I say I’ll stay in touch. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way…” I worry that without significant and deliberate attempts, the relationships I’ve built here will fade. We’ll all move on with our daily lives and eventually the all too common social norms of not wanting to be a bother or not wanting to intrude will pull us in the direction of not staying in touch. The worst part of it all, is that I think we all mean and hope to do better than that.
I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they’re envious of my trip or that they think it’s brave move. In those comments, I hear echoes of choosing the path less traveled. I hear hints of admiration for choosing rugged individualism. I’ve been tempted to correct them but frequently defaulted to undercutting their admiration by reminding them this could be a really stupid plan – time will tell. The reality is much less glorious than some bold adventure. I wanted to do something different, move to a different part of the country. I haven’t found a job yet, so I might as well travel a bit until I have something more secure lined up. Like the narrator in the Frost poem, I have to choose one of the paths, and in my view, they’re not terribly different from each other. Get anew job and move there or wander around a bit and find a job somewhere. There are no guarantees that either path will work out. Earlier in the poem Frost too admits that the two paths aren’t all that different from each other:
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.
Today I leave. In some version of tomorrow, I may be back. I will be back for holidays and family – though probably not as often as I would like. I hope to stay in touch with friends. Time and effort will tell. I don’t really know what tomorrow looks like or if I even get a tomorrow. What I know is that it’s morning here in State College. It’s crisp and cool like fall and all the paths have equal appeal.