Have you ever wondered if the choices you make today will shape your future in a meaningful way; how your proverbial butterfly wings will effect you in decades time?
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about my decision to move to Porto. She reflected, “One day you'll be able to look back and be grateful that you did that."
Doing something interesting and arguably uncommon, with the ability to look back and reminisce - "doing it for the plot", as Gen Z might say – no longer appeals to me. Instead, I focus on two questions:
What do I want?
Does it align with my values?
These questions have guided many of my recent decisions, especially as I find myself moving away from traditional sources of inspiration. For instance, I now dislike poetry; my brain hurts trying to unravel the knots of a stanza to draw out some sort of meaning.
But the conversation I had with my friend reminded me of the famous stanza in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
Many interpret this as an individualistic mantra to forge your own path in life. I decided to actually read the poem in full and realised that that's not what the poem is saying at all.
What is the actual meaning of the poem?
I won’t analyse the whole poem here, but there are a few ideas that resonate with me.
There's no real difference between the character’s two paths. The character tries to predict what will happen in the future, but chooses one path on a whim and retrospectively finds meaning in it. Which is what we often do and I would argue is basically why we keep living day to day.
We don't know what the future holds, so we choose to do things and find meaning to imbue them with. Otherwise, what the hell are we doing here?
And later down the road, when we think about what choices we might have made instead, we’re able to mentally rehearse the purpose we ascribed to the decision we actually made. And hopefully avoid any regret by doing so.
Naturally, we want to experience both paths and choose the best one, but we can’t. That’s why the poem is called The Road Not Taken, and not The Road Less Travelled.
When you actively choose one path, you are actively choosing against another. For me, simultaneously choosing against another path is just as important and empowering as choosing a particular path.
Knowing what you don’t want clarifies what you do want.
And of course, you can never retrace your steps back to the fork in the road and venture the other way, because you wouldn’t be the same person as you were before.
So whatever you choose to do, or choose not to do, make it count, make sure it’s what you want and make sure it aligns with your values.
Have I made the “right“ decision to move to Porto? I feel that I have. And in the future I’ll probably feel the same way. Whether true or not, I’ll have reasons as to why it probably was. However at that point, and really at every point along my path taken, I still choose to live in a Stoic manner, where I ask myself:
Do I have control over my path? If true, take action
Or
Do I only have some control over my path? If true, set goals that depend on circumstances in my control
Or
Do I have no control over my path? If true, detach my self from the issue at hand and move on
Would love to hear your thoughts about how you make decisions big or small, or any crossroads you’ve faced and how you’ve navigated them.
Sometimes doing it for the plot,
Aron
The Road Not Taken, 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.
References
Sometimes when I'm alone on public transportation, I look around and think about how every stranger on the bus or train could have meant something to me had I a chosen a different path in life or been born into a different family. I started doing this in university and it's always tripped me out. Everybody is somebody's child, best friend, maybe somebody's significant other or teacher or parent. I think we apply meaning to people in the same way we do life decisions. We'll say things like "imagine if I never took that job, then I never would've met that colleague who introduced me to the love of my life", etc. But actually, for as many profound connections and moments we've accumulated, we've lost infinitely more because of all the decisions we didn't make and the paths we didn't follow. Don't get me wrong, I find it beautiful to reflect on the sliding door moments in my life and how each tiny decision has led me to the people and places and circumstances that I'm in today; however, I've let go of a lot of fear of making the wrong decision when I come to a fork in the road. I think you can create beauty or despair in anything depending on the way you think about your life. You can choose to romanticize and apply a narrative to the realities of being a human on planet earth, or you can just show up every day and take things as they come. I think the former is a little bit more enjoyable.