Robert Frost
This poem for me brings up contemplation and hindsight. I don’t know about you, I sometimes review my life and think about the “what if’s”. Not that I regret anything. I figured out a long time ago, when I finally learned to truly love myself for who I am, that I wouldn’t be WHO I am without the path that brought me to my present. Therefore, no regrets.
I do like to ponder the ‘What would be different if… I had done this or that instead of what I did.’ Thus, the road not taken. I realized a long time ago that me working at the Keg when I was in my teens was a major factor in my life. If I had not worked there I would not have met the boyfriend who introduced me to the friend who got me a job at a hotel that introduced me to the women who introduced me to the man I was to married who, of course, fathered my children. I could not imagine life without my kids. Of course that includes everything that has happened in my life since and what is yet to come. So, had I NOT worked as a hostess when I was 15 at the Keg I would not have the life that I love now. The road taken.
Recently, as we do around Father’s Day, I was reminiscing about a road trip my dad and I were to take to view a College down in Florida either the summer I was 16 or 17, I can’t remember which. We didn’t take the road trip but we did fly down to visit it. (That, possibly, is another story for another time). While down there, I decided not to go to Bethune Cookman University, as I thought I would spend more time in Miami than at school. I don’t know if this is true or not. Tis the road not taken.
And like in the poem, I am not sad that I did not take that road. I am glad I took the one I did. I can’t miss what I don’t know.
At least that is my take. What is yours?
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.
