The Road Not Taken
The choice we never made
Have you ever been forced to make a tough choice because you were in a difficult situation? Perhaps you have had to decide between two equally desirable goals in life, such as pursuing a career as a scientist or a nurse. Perhaps you have thought about the various study or activity avenues that each option would take you. Throughout our lives, we have all had to make difficult decisions. Often, these decisions are made more difficult because we are afraid of the outcome or whether the decision we make is the right one.
Robert Frost, a well-known poet from America, actually wrote a poem that perfectly captures this emotion. Presumably, Frost’s most well-known poem is “The Road Not Taken,” which was initially released in 1916. Frequently cited as motivational statements encouraging us to surmount life’s challenges are the last words of the poem, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
The poem depicts a person attempting to choose between two options while standing at a fork in a road in the woods. He follows one road as far as he can see, but after giving it some more thought, he chooses to take the other one because it appears that no one has gone that way before, and he is interested to see where it leads.
