I hope this poem can encourage people who feel like giving up on their passions and taking the easy road in life - such as listening to your parents about which major you should take, because it will make a lot of money and bring the family status. It’s good to be realistic. I’m not saying rebel, but I want people to know that they should be the ones making their life decisions. It’s a pretty good idea to listen with an open mind, on what others have to say. Just make sure you balance your opinions and other people’s thoughts.
I understand there might be the fear of making the wrong choice and so we listen to advice from outside ourselves. If things go wrong or you feel unhappy, you yourself don’t become responsible for a supposed “failure” you can blame the people who made that choice for you. I don’t believe failure is failure - It only becomes failure if you don’t learn from it and you let it stop yourself from moving forward. I’m still struggling to figure out which path I should take and there’s advice coming from the outside, which is tempting. I could just let them choose my life and not think about it. But I understand as long as it wasn’t from myself, I will never be satisfied with myself. Even if it takes a long time to reach my goals and even if I falter along the way, in the end it will all be worth the risk and struggle. Each of my failures will mean that I at least attempted at something, rather than being afraid to do anything.
The Road Not Taken
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 onto 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.
Robert Frost (1916)
I took the path less taken many times. It allowed me to grow better. Though it also cost me a lot, so ultimately I’d say it’s a live and learn sorta thing. Focus on your own pace while keeping things going with the flow. No need to match the others so long as it gets done on time. Pretty much how I do things at least. All you have to do is look at my car and how I started and where it is now to see how I took that path less taken.
For me, this has always been a poem about how, every time you choose something, you’re forgoing something else in order to do so. Knowing how way leads onto way, each choice you make brings 10 more with it, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever be able to chase your decisions back up the tree to try something else. (Like those choose-your-own-adventure books…you can only bookmark a few decisions up the tree before you’ve got one in every page.)