Tuesday, February 24, 2015

One Word, Five Voices: Path

WARNING: I'm gonna go a little poetry nerd on all of you today.

I'm sure all of you are familiar with Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken," or at least its very famous last three lines:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

(You can read the whole poem here.)

On the surface, the poem is a metaphor for two different paths in life. The speaker must choose one path and spends the entire poem deliberating, even wondering how he'll feel about choosing that path later in life. What's underneath the surface read though, is that he never actually chooses. The entire poem is about his indecision. It's always ironic to me how people plaster this quote all over things when they're making big decisions in their lives, not knowing they're really celebrating indecision. Oh, Frost. You're so tricky.

Seriously though, what I love about this poem and its trickyness is that all of us can relate. Who among us hasn't stood exactly where the speaker in this poem stands? A decision needs to be made and you have absolutely no idea what the right answer is, what path you should take on the diverging road. In those moments, all you can do is pray for the answer and have faith that you're following the right path.

That's what's so great about having faith. You don't know exactly what the journey might look like, but you do know that wherever it leads, you'll end up in a good place—right where you were meant to be all along.
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 Check out what my friends think of today's word on their blogs: ShawnHeatherSteph and Brian.

3 comments:

Heather said...

So perfect you picked a poem. And I didn't know that about the poem. Thanks for sharing.

practicingresurrectionlife.com said...

Wait, doesn't he show that he chooses the path less traveled by?

My life is entirely in question now....

Unknown said...

Ha! Read it closely Swanson. Frost himself called this poem "very tricky." It's not what you think on the surface. Mind...BLOWN! ;)