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Is it Possible To Love Two People at the Same Time?
It’s possible, but happiness will only come if you honor one choice
It’s one of the most misread poems of the twentieth century. You have probably heard its poignant, final lines in countless graduation speeches.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Of course, I am talking about Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Even Frost was annoyed that people misunderstood it. Frost warned, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem — very tricky.”
If you read the last few lines only, it seems Frost’s poem is a paean to individualism. The writer is faced with two choices, and he takes the road “less traveled.”
But the middle lines tell a different story.
“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.”
Frost is saying that it doesn’t matter what damn road you take. So once you make a choice, don’t keep trodding over it and obsessing to the point where the past becomes “black.” Instead, let your chosen road be the one that “made all the difference.”
