You know the cliché about taking the road less traveled? It’s said so often it sounds stupid or pretentious, and usually said by people who don’t mean it.It’s from a great poem, though, by Robert Frost, and it’s short, just twenty lines: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.More poems should be so short. Says it all, really, so I want to say something more.
I’ve lived in a closet, and in a van down by the river, and in residential hotels that would frighten ordinary folks. I’ve stayed in houses shared with friends and strangers who became sort of an oddball family. For a while I squatted in an empty basement. Even tried living in the woods — what a disaster that was, and I wouldn’t do it again. But I’m glad I did it once.If I’d made normal choices instead, maybe I would’ve had a career,
instead of so many dead-end jobs. Maybe there’d be children and
grandchildren. Maybe I’d own a house, maybe even a necktie.And if I’d made normal choices, I never would’ve met my wife, never would’ve had the best years of my life. She’d made some out-of-the-ordinary decisions along her path, too, which led to our paths converging.And that has made all the difference, as Frost said so much better than me.
So there it is, the most important lesson I’ve learned in life: When there’s a choice to be made, always at least consider the weird choice.Most people don’t. They do what’s expected of them, and that’s how most people become ‘most people’ — boring fucks. You never want to be ‘most people’.Try something crazy instead. Fences are for cattle, and walls are for prisons. If you let society’s notion of ‘normal’ set your boundaries, you’ve snipped away the most interesting possibilities.
Of course, the guy writing this is old and gray and fat and feeble, with not much adventure in me now. Getting here, though, I came by a path less traveled, and every step of remembering it puts a smile on my face.Can ‘most people’ say that?
10/19/2020
Republished 4/8/2024
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