The Fork in the Road

Many years ago I read a poem by Robert Frost entitled "The Road Not Taken" which goes like this:

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 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.  

 

At the time I was fairly young and, though I liked the poem, it did not and could not have that deep significance it has taken on for me today, as it resonates over all the intervening years. In our life, we all take many decisions, choose between one path and another, one course of action as against another. Just after embarking upon our chosen path, it may still be possible to retrace our steps, regain the fork in the road and take the other path, but as we travel on the road we have opted to take, it becomes progressively harder to go back, until one day there is no going back, no second chance, no alternative course. For good or for bad, we must now continue along our chosen path.

This question of choosing our life's path puts me in mind of a movie I first saw a few years ago, called Cast Away and starring Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland. I won't go into the plot of the film, you have more than likely seen it yourself, but if not,  go to Cast Away and you'll see what it's about. Anyway, at the very end of the film, the protagonist arrives at a remote crossroads in open countryside where he alights from his car and looks around at the four roads that vanish into the distance. A woman passing by in a truck stops to inform him where each of these routes leads. After she drives away, he is left looking down each road, seemingly unable to decide which to take, since each represents an unknown future which may bring him happiness or misfortune. The camera focuses on his face and we sense the mental anguish that he must be going through as he struggles to come to a decision. And that's where we leave him.

The ending of the movie is very poignant and moving, as the theme music kicks in and we wonder what his choice will be. But it really doesn't matter, as none of us knows in which direction happiness lies. The point is that he is literally at the crossroad of his life and the choice he makes now may well decide the course of the rest of his life. In one way or another, this is a situation that faces all of us at different stages of our life. And just as Frost's traveller opts for one road, knowing in his heart of hearts that it is unlikely he will come that way again, so Chuck knows that the route he chooses to go down is likely to be final and decisive.