The Road not Taken

“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.”

This is the last stanza from Robert Frost’s most analyzed poem ‘The Road not taken’. Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson are two of my favorite poets. I could always relate to their poems, their take on life and love, and the mystery element in their poems. ‘The Road Not taken’ ends almost similar to Frost’s other renowned poem ‘Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening’. While idealists would analyze both to be inspiring, it is still not clear if poet intended that way. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t and let the audience perceive the way they wanted. On Road not Taken, Frost asserts,

You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.

It is indeed a very tricky poem and a reason why it is the most analyzed and interpreted poem. I am not getting into the details of it. Entire poem and its detailed analysis are available here. The premise of this post is the above mentioned stanza. The poet says that out of two roads, he took the less traveled one and it has made all the difference in his life. Now whether it is positive or negative is moot. The usage of ‘sigh’ in the first line could be a sigh of relief or sigh of despair. We will never know.

Have you ever been in such a dilemma; a quandary where you had two options? Which option did you choose? Did you take the popular path or decide to be the trendsetter and choose the less traveled one? Have you ever regretted such major decisions in life? If given a chance would you go back and take the other one?

Looking back I don’t regret much. Even now there are times when I am in a fix and unable to make up my mind. It might be a major one or not so grave one; I think, analyze the pros and cons on major ones and now the inconsequential ones where I have to confront someone, I think about it a little more and sometimes ignore if it doesn’t affect me. I used to be impetuous before and though it had positive as well as negative results, I would like to believe that it was more negative. Now I give it more time and thought. Every decision in life isn’t that easy but then one needs to take the risk.

I consider myself lucky that I can heave a sigh of relief after choosing the less traveled road. Sometimes I do wonder though what it would have been had I chosen the other path? How life would have turned out? Do you all think that way?

The title of the poem is ‘Road not taken’ not ‘Road less traveled’. So may be the author was also thinking about the path that he didn’t take. How would it have been? One wonders! sigh….

A beautiful instrumental odyssey from Rahul Sharma’s Time Traveller,

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On an unrelated note…or is it related? This is actually the ‘road I always shied away from’ . After being branded a Dinosaur for not tweeting, I finally took the plunge yesterday. Never been part of any social networking sites so as expected got bored immediately. But now am liking this tweety bird thanks to confused soul…..chirp away.. http://twitter.com/solitalks