SEPTEMBER 2022 THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Since we each live only one life, we have to make choices: we do one thing, and therefore don’t do another. So as we get older, a natural part of life is to come to terms with the reality that of the multiple lives we might have lived, this is the one we are living. We may be tempted to go back and second guess ourselves, thus stoking regrets that are now pointless. A more productive approach might be to come to terms with who we are now, recognizing that the life we’re living IS our life and not someone else’s, even if it isn’t what we planned.
One of the best known expressions of this reality in literature is Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” Here’s a version of it read by Frost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdYv7g0r0A and the text appears below.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
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 on to 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—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Writing exercise: When addressing this topic, people often think about what might have been, and whether their life would have been better or worse if they had made different decisions. That’s a natural thing to do, but it doesn’t go anywhere because who knows? Maybe if you had been in one place rather than in another, you would have had some completely unexpected experience that you can’t possibly know about now. So for this writing, focus on the road you did take, the choices you did make. What was a major decision point, or more than one? What is in your life now because of it? Importantly, just take a moment to look at where you are now and to recognize that this IS your life, not someone else’s. You’re not an imposter. This IS you.
You might also like to use one or more of these quotations as a prompt for writing:
“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.” – Maya Angelou
“Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it was the wrong choice. The world is full of probabilities, not certainties.” ― James Clear
“Is life a game of yes or no? I wonder about the absolutes that we try to create for ourselves, our relationship, our life choices. We try to make things black and white when sometimes it is much more grey.” ― Savi Sharma
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. — Eleanor Roosevelt
