“The Road Not Taken” is Robert Frost’s most popular poem, and I am among those who call it my favorite. I used to wish a lesser-known poem appealed to me more, as I rather resent the implication that I’m just a number in the mass majority appreciating this work.
Which kind of validates my choice, when you think about it.
Last weekend I found a nice 8 ½ x 11 framed greeting card at a garage sale. It shows the back of a nondescript person—probably female, since the jacket has red dots and lace on it—carrying a suitcase and sporting a handkerchief-tied bundle on a stick slung over her shoulder. This person has just passed a crossroads in the woods where two signs point in different directions. The way she is headed says “Your Life;” the other way is “No longer an option.”
In Frost’s poem, he says he’ll save the other path for another day, but knowing how way leads on to way, he doubts he’ll ever be back. The heading on the greeting card (and this post) says much the same thing.
So today I’ve been contemplating all the decisions in direction (let’s call them life choices) I’ve made, and my roads not taken. Do I have regrets? Yes, of course I do! Dozens of them! Doesn’t everybody? I don’t think I trust anyone who says they have no regrets!
But can I do anything about them? (That was rhetorical, of course)
What I have always done, and will continue to do, is gather information, research, plan, evaluate and calculate the consequences of my decisions and then just plunge on ahead, hoping for the best.
And the best, as they say, is always yet to come.
