Importance of Making Decisions (The Road Not Taken)

Throughout life, we are required to make decisions that can be life changing. This is part of our nature as humans. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a Poem in which the speaker has two roads in front of him and needs to decide which one to take.

‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both” (Lyman, 1996, p. 17)

When we make choices in real life we can say that depending the road we decide to choose it will lead to different consequences. We can also say that every decision we make opens a path for us and closes others. Many times, when we choose to follow a path we do not have the choice to go back and choose the other road later. However, if we decide to go back and chose the other path, the path you did not use today will most likely not be the same tomorrow.

In the poem, the speaker, has a choice to the make, he needs to decide which road to take. He mentions standing for a long time wondering what the best option would be. He then decides to choose the least traveled one.

“Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (Lyman, 1996, p. 17)

After he makes his choice he wonders what would have been like taking the other path. He stated he would have chosen either path that morning because they both looked similar. The speaker also mentions he left the other path for another day in a moment he feels tempted to walk back to return to the discarded path.

In life there are many people who follow others dream or inspirations and want what other have. This way they don’t have to think too much for themselves just follow. I believe by choosing the easy path those people are limiting themselves to pursue other’s dream and risking forgetting their true desires and feelings. The easy way has already been exploited and appropriated by those who passed before. We are confident that this path shouldn’t be dangerous, since many others have done so, it obviously should not imply a great risk. The other side of the coin is that, like any investment, it means that the higher the risk, the greater the potential for profitability, the less risky path is the one that has the least chance of giving us good benefits

When we chose to follow the road less traveled, we don’t always know what to expect. There are usually greater difficulties and we need to leave our comfort zone to make difficult choices, however, it is our own choice, no one else’s. That road less traveled is possibly our only chance to find ourselves because it is not marked by the majority. The marked and excessively traveled roads do not usually leave too much to those who come behind.

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