The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken
A Poem 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.

I like poem. It was so vague that it can be intrepreted into many meanings. Heard a snippet of this poem in the tv show 'Are You Smarter Than 5th Grader?' and was interested to know more. I think its the last paragraph that pique my interest "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by". Lives are all about choices and oppurtunity cost (keluar economic ku tarus). In this poem the writer dared to be different and choose the path that seldom people had chosen.

My intrepretation for the third paragraph, he said he would try the other path (the other choice) another time but though deep inside he knows there's no turning back. So the poem in one hand told us to be brave and take the risk, not just following the herd, or go with the flow. In a deeper level, you might do a u-turn and take the other option, but its just won't be the same as it would have been if you had taken it the first time around. It does not moralize about the choice you made, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.