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 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.

Robert Frost

I read this poem years ago and quite liked it, but recently at a training course a group of us read it together and I realised I had totally misunderstood it. I thought Robert Frost was writing about not going with the flow, doing something few others have done before, being different... and I suppose that might be part of it. But the title is The Road Not Taken. The poem is about the option he didn't take, the path which became forever closed to him because he decided to go a different way. And he stood for a long time looking down the road not taken, then took the other. And it's not even clear whether he made the right choice - "that has made all the difference" - but he doesn't say whether in a good way or not. At the course we were asked how this poem made us feel and my immediate reaction was: "absolutely terrified." There aren't any guarantees in life - apart from death and taxes, as my Dad frequently reminds me, cheerful soul that he is. If God asks us to give things up, he doesn't guarantee he'll give them back to us in the future. Actually, maybe he does. As I've been writing, these verses have come back to me:

Then Peter said, "Look! We have left our homes to follow you." "Yes," Jesus said to them, "and I assure you that anyone who leaves home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God will receive much more in this present age and eternal life in the age to come." - Luke 18:28-30