Choices : Making a difference

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‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - 

I took the one less traveled by,

 And that has made all the difference.’                                                                                                 -Robert Frost

 

When I first read this poem, I had come to a simple conclusion about its core message  - ‘Don't follow the herd. Be yourself’.And books,movies,entrepreneurs and pop culture has repeatedly taught us the same. Be yourself.Find your own truth.Follow your passion.Your life is for you to live as best you please. After all YOLO !


I personally was a bit sceptical of this message, as I am of most pop culture propaganda.If we all followed our dreams and did what we love, we would end up with more wildlife photographers than animal species to photograph and enough travel bloggers to make Kingfisher airlines commercially viable again.My simple adolescent logic could not accept this message, our society would collapse ! This was such a dangerous idea for children to have. 

 

And years of education has only backed this belief of mine. At 17 years of age I wanted to be a physicist, at 19 I was obsessed with biomedical engineering and at 22 I am pouring more attention into this article than have in any of my engineering subjects in the past 6 months.People change, our interests change and so do our passions. 

 

I envy that high school kid who knows exactly what he wants to do with his life, the 35 year old with a massive midlife crisis seems is far more common in this day and age. And so my naturally overthinking mind wonders- ’Is Frost’s poem actually one of regret expressed by an old man thinking of what could have been?’ 

 

This thought to me is far more terrifying than any pop culture propaganda machine. It's one thing to be clueless in your early 20s, I certainly don't want to be filled with regret in my old age.


And so I went out searching for answers, scoured the far reaches of human knowledge- When even Google searches failed, I meandered into the time spirals of YouTube, so great was my thirst for answers. And finally, I had my eureka moment and like Archimedes my restless mind ran nude with ecstasy. So what had I found you ask? Why Frost’s own recitation of his poem.

 

 





And I don't know what it was, the innate wisdom in his weather beaten voice or my own caffeine spiked, sleep deprived mind( what you choose to believe will tell you whether you are a poet or a mathematician at your core, but that's a blog post for another time) but I found the crux of his masterpiece - ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by’.

The emphasis on one self, that's what actually made all the difference. Frost was truly a poetic genius. This is neither a poem of silly adolescent ideals or the pangs of regret of an old man, it's a poem about both of those things and so much more. It's a poem about choices, and how life is filled with them. And with each choice we make, each road we choose to walk down, we discover something new about ourselves- something which can either excite us or leave us disappointed in our own character. But what Frost promises is that no matter what, you will find yourself in the end and maybe that’s actually what makes all the difference.




Location: Shillong, Meghalaya, India

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