The Road Not Taken…. Or Not...
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 marked 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.
1) Even with the failure of a system most schools run, one can still bump into some pretty good "true education" every once in a while. (You see, I first read this poem in my Literature book in 7th Grade)
2) Every time I bump into this poem, I realize how much deep meanings it holds. And surprisingly, each year this poem holds a totally different meaning than it did the year before.
Conventionally this poem’s message or thesis would be "It is the road less popular that is usually the prudent one to choose" I.E. "Not all what glows is gold" or "Going against convention is mostly the right thing to do". All remarks that encourage us to not listen to what society has to say if we believe in what we're doing. I mean seriously, look at all those eminent figures in history who have made this world what it stands to be, but whose actions were treated as offensive heresy at their time! Take Galileo Galilei, Martin Luther King, Brothers Wright, and many other figures in History who fought against their contemporary society's deprecating look (Well in Martin Luther King Jr.’s case, it was half of the society, but still the governing half). The poem, along with all those people's experiences, was meant to teach us perseverance- not to travel a road only because of the promising light in the end of it, because it might not turn out be what you expected, but to take the risks of the dark less renowned one because it might as well surprise you!
But what if "The Road Not Taken" transforms into something like this
What if, like almost everything else in our lives, we take those profound lessons and mutate them the way we want? What if The Road Not Taken becomes so popular it transforms into the wanted one? The irony: when now, in our contemporary life, the unusual way is the way everyone wants to traverse, that it transforms into one other path to the same failure. Allow me to explain: Just as we Arabs, for example, take the remark "Try and resemble the West; they're way ahead of you" and translate it to "Blindly imitate anything that has "America" written on it", instead of defining it as "See how organized they are, how professional, etc… and try and apply this". But no... People have this penchant to change any orders the way they'd like them to be. Just as in the situation of the wrong interpretation of "The Road Not Taken”. Instead of "don't go to school with high-heels because everyone is", it is "shave your head bold so that you become different", not necessary because you want to and have a good reason to do it based on some belief, but because it has become the new fad -to go against fads! It isn't any more “voice out your opinions and beliefs no matter what or who”, as much as it is now "Say no! Go against that monster, convention! I don't know what the heck you're talking about, but you gotta disagree, man!" Nowadays, it isn't the people who "have the guts to disagree", but those who have the prudence to know, when, why, and how to voice out their beliefs, who truly succeed in life... Well at least that's what humble me has to say! XP
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