"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;..."
Yes, Bob. I feel you tonight.
Similar to Frost's Traveler in The Road Not Taken, I find myself at a fork in the road, peering down two paths, unsure which one I should take. There are benefits and disclaimers to both paths, and realistically, I cannot travel both. At least, not at the present time.
"Then took the other, 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,..."
There is, it would seem, a high road and a low road in this fork, but who can be sure which is which? On the one hand, one seems to be the high road from the initial vantage point, but who knows what could be accomplished by taking the one that seems to not be the high road? What unknown heights could this "lower" path soar to, given a long enough traverse?
"And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
But knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back...."
Will there be an opportunity to return to take the other path? Life is always flowing forward, not backward, so in the tide of time, odds are I won't be given a chance to pursue the other path once the one chosen is started. Is the unknown something I can afford to forfeit?
Can I live with not knowing what I've given up?
"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."
And ultimately, which path will I have been more satisfied with at journey's end? Will my sigh from "ages and ages hence" be a happy sigh or a frustrated one? Will the rocking chair on the porch around the house surrounded by the Elysian field be a place of satisfactory remembrance or one of hesitant, nostalgic memories (nostalgia in this sense being its literal, historic self: nostos--homecoming + algia--pain = the pain of going home)?
And will I keep standing here as seasons continue to go by? Or will I just take a step?
(Thanks to the memory of Robert Frost. May New England never forget you in the autumn months.)
