I still remember my English teacher in high school told us to interpret and memorize Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” na hanggang ngayon mas memorize ko pa kaysa sa famous “Trees” ni Joyce Kilmer.
At that time, we interpreted the “yellow wood” literally as a forest.
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 . . .
Until now, the poem still struck me, but I realized and referred the “yellow wood” in his poem as the autumn of our lives! Yong panahon na kailangan mong mag desisyon sa buhay given 2 choices. What a different insight that gave me, in contrast to the first time we interpret the poem
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
Now it speaks to me of coming to that point in the autumn of our lives when we stop and decide whether to break from the path we have been taking:
Sometimes we stand at a fork in the road and there is no turning back
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..
As more and more of us enter into the autumn of our lives, my hope is that we will muster up the courage to take the road less traveled and share Robert Frost’s deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that the new path was the right path:
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.
