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.

Robert Frost’s most famous poem is also his most misunderstood, starting from the almost universal misquoting of the title: “The Road Not Taken,” not “The Road Less Traveled.” The poem, it turns out, is not really about taking roads no one else has taken but is really a reflection on all those other roads we could have taken.

As usual, Frost begins not with ethereal reflections on ‘life’ but with concrete observations about a mundane affair: traveling through the woods and encountering a fork in the road. The word ‘traveler’ in the third line is important, because here we have not someone casually perusing local woods that he can go back to again and again but someone on a journey. No signposts are mentioned, the traveler simply has to pick one. But picking a road means going one place, not going another place. How to choose? He can see a little ways down the road, but where the road ultimately leads, who knows?

So the traveler chooses, imagining that he might travel the other road some other day, but on reflection notes that this is really impossible: ‘way leads on to way,’ one road leads to another, and having traveled on, this particular choice will never come up again.

In the last stanza the poet imagines himself telling the story of his journey long afterwards and reflecting on the critical choice he made, and he offers an explanation: he chose the road less traveled by. So as a storyteller, our traveler makes himself out as a rugged individualist who picked a path precisely because few had taken that path.

What is interesting here is that, as in several of Frost’s poems (I’m thinking of “Mending Wall”), there is a contradiction between the memorable conclusion and the rest of the poem. When we go back to our traveler standing at the fork in the road, he notes that one road had “perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear,” but in fact “the passing there had worn them really about the same.” Indeed, he goes on to note that “both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.” So the road he chose was not, in fact, the road less traveled. The roads were the same, and since he had to pick one, he picked one. But the choice was in fact not a matter of some high principle, it was essentially arbitrary, a coin-flip, but one that determined the rest of his journey.

Now it is true that Robert Frost was proud of his stance as a rugged individualist who refused to follow the crowd, and any number of other poems preach this approach to life (“The Lone Striker,” “Into the Woods,” and many others). He was indeed exactly the kind of person who would have chosen a road precisely because no one else was going that way. But in this poem Frost turns his dry, teasing sense of humor against himself, imagining himself telling his life story as an application of his personal philosophy of not following the crowds. But the poem gives him away: nothing so grand as following the road less traveled was happening, just a more or less arbitrary choice: “what the heck, I’ll go this way.”

“The Road Not Taken” is, in part, about how we construct stories to make sense of and justify the course of our lives. It doesn’t feel quite right to describe the course of your life as determined by arbitrary decisions, so we concoct stories that make the course of our lives seem determined by high-minded principles (whether it’s rugged individualism or whatever principles you like), as if it had to be this way, had to turn out the way it did. But it’s not true. That other road was wide open, and we could have taken it. It all could have been different, a completely different journey, a completely different life.

So the poem is a gentle rebuke against our tendency to tell our stories and view our lives through the filter of some self-congratulatory lens that makes everything determined by high-minded principles. No better is the unbiblical notion that “God has a plan for your life,” that God has already laid out the map for all these forks in the road and your current journey was picked out by him in advance, so that the story of your life becomes the story of your correct and faithful reading of all God’s signposts – a more subtle but spiritually arrogant misreading of one’s own life. There are many forks in the road for all of us, no obvious way to choose between them, and at any of them we could have chosen another road. It all could have been different.

I remember as a high school senior deciding between going to TCU or to Transylvania for college. Nothing earth-shaking or grand here, everyone goes through this. But reflecting on the consequences of this one decision illustrates Frost’s point about how ‘way leads on to way.’ Going to TCU set the rest of my journey in more ways than I can count: exploring religion and psychology with Ken Lawrence, biblical theology with Bill Baird, from there going to graduate school in biblical studies, and also the people I befriended, meeting my first wife at TCU and the children we had together, and now grandchildren. Everything in my life, it seems, followed one way or another from that simple choice: TCU in Fort Worth or Transylvania in Lexington? If I try to re-imagine my life along that other road – what if I had gone to Transylvania? – it all would have been different: different family, different children and grandchildren, different career path. Would it have been a better life? A worse life? Who knows? Could I get a ‘do-over’ if I wanted to, and go back to take the other road? No, even if I enrolled at Transylvania, today, it’s obviously not the same thing. Frost was right: way leads on to way, and there’s no going back.

Realizing the consequences of such decisions can be paralyzing when you’re standing there at the cross-roads. How am I going to choose? What if I pick the wrong road? Especially for young people, it can feel like the weight of the world on you to realize what’s at stake when you make these choices: take this job or that one, move or stay here, go to college here or there, marry this person or that one or no one for now, buy this house or not, keep this job or switch. It is tempting to fall back on one of various schemes to put responsibility for choosing on someone other than myself, whether this means grand principles or thinking God is going to make the decision for me. These approaches are false, inauthentic, because as tempting as it is in decision-making, and consoling as it is in hindsight as a storyteller, to attribute our choices of road to grand principles or divine guidance, these approaches disguise the real situation, which is that the course of our lives depends on choices made by us, and no one but us, without being able to see precisely where the road is going.

Authenticity means seeing things as they are, that our entire lives in past and present could have been entirely different than they are, and that our life in front of us could go any of various directions but when faced with choices we can only see a little down the road. To accept this is to acknowledge ourselves as human, mortal, able to see only from where we stand and unable to see all roads at once.

The authentic approach to life is part of what it means to have faith: not that God has made all these decisions for me but that whichever road I take, God is with me and I am with God. Should I pray for guidance at the crossroad? Of course. Should I use my best observation and judgment to weigh different roads in front of me? Should I choose in a way that I remain faithful to God, to my family, to my community, to my country and the human race? Of course. But all those high-sounding notions don’t necessarily result in an arrow pointing down one fork in the road. Most of the time, ‘both roads equally lay,’ and we just have to choose.

So choose. Bonhoeffer described faith as ‘throwing oneself into life,’ and so we must, taking a road without looking back, trusting to God for faithfulness along the road we’re on, trusting God that even if we can’t go back, we can make course corrections along the way. And in faith we can look back over our lives authentically, that even though (for better or worse) it all could have been different, we can be grateful for the blessings we have and not bitter over the roads not taken, humble in the grace that has brought us safe so far, even with momentous but arbitrary choices, rather than constructing self-serving accounts of how our grand principles have put us on a predetermined path and outcome.

It all could have been different, and who knows what’s down the road, but in the end what matters most is not which road we take but our faithfulness along the road we take.

Mark A Plunkett
Columbus, GA

2017