The Road Less Traveled

And despite the title, I’m not necessarily talking about the one less traveled, either. I mean, the one we take, no matter how little traveled it is.

Yesterday after our all-day meeting, after too many Guinesses and martinis, I suppose, K told me about a definite time in her life when she was at a fork and chose one way over another. Her story put me in the Way Back Machine, on some dark night when I was a teen riding around in a car with a buddy of mine. There but by the grace of God I didn’t end up dead or a juvie when I was a kid. And I remember that one particular night looking over at him at the wheel of his beat-to-s**t car, and thinking I don’t want this. I’m not going to live like this. I’m going to go to school and study and use my brain.

And that night made all the difference.

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

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 onto 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 took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
--Robert Frost