This month, we used Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” as a springboard to discuss how we feel about decisions years after we’ve made them. Here is the poem — or, if you prefer, you can listen to Frost reading it here.
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.
Using this poem as a prompt, you might want to write about whatever memories or reflections come to mind as you think about what it means.
You might also want to use one or more of these quotations as the basis 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
