October 24: High School, Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

When I was a senior in high school, my class voted for this motto:  "Don't go where there is a path.  Rather, go where there is no path and leave a trail."

Not very original, I know.  I think that little saying makes the top ten list of every senior high school class.  That and "I'm outta here suckah."  However, it's a beautiful little sentiment about not being afraid of hard work.  Making a new path in the world is tough.

In my salutatorian address at graduation, I read the Robert Frost poem below.  I believed it, too.  I thought I was going to be the next Robert Frost or Ernest Hemingway.  The whole world seemed so bright and exciting.  I wasn't looking for any paved roads.  I was going to be a pioneer.

Now, almost 30 years later, I realize that those unpaved roads made my life quite difficult at times.  Still do.  If I had thought about the odds of becoming a full-time writer, I may have taken a few more busy thoroughfares.  Stuck with computer science as my major.  Learned a skilled trade.  Welding, maybe.  Because, I am here to tell you that the road not taken is not all it's cracked up to be.

Of course, that wouldn't have been much of a graduation speech.  "Dear classmates, life is going to suck for most of us.  Be prepared."

Saint Marty is still going down his road not taken.

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.

Pretty much says it all...