Taking the Road Less Travelled By

Recently, I read this poem called ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Lee Frost. He is such an amazing poet! He is the same poet who has written the famous poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’.

The poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ ends with this paragraph –

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a road, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

The poet is sharing the experience of walking in a forest during the season of fall when he came across a fork-in-the-road which he was travelling on many years ago. One road was cemented, so it was easy to travel by. The second road was grassy, and it was difficult to travel by. The poet was in a fix and had to take a decision. He had to decide which road to take. He finally took the hard way out and this gives him a sigh of relief as he is now a successful person because of that decision (the roads signify the choices in life).

We all come across many hard choices where we have to decide which decision to make. Sometimes, these decisions shape us and decide our future. We all have this habit of choosing the easy way out, and not the hard way out. As it requires a lot of hard work and is not taken by most people, it gives us an ‘opportunity’ to skip it.

But the truth is that we should choose a decision which will benefit us in the long term and not just for a few years. For example, if I won a lottery, I will not spend all the money. I will buy something for my needs and not my wants. I will save money as it may benefit me in the long term. This is the correct long-term decision. But if I spend all my money on buying things for myself which I don’t even require, I will just be wasting my money.

Also, sometimes we want to do what our peers are doing - the easy way out. We don’t want to stand out. But, you know, by taking the easy way, we will be one OF the million people to do so but by taking the hard way, we will be one IN a million people to do so and that will make all the difference. Our decisions decide what we'll become, what our future holds and how successful we will be in life.....