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.
I recall learning this poem for the first time when I was in middle school. We all adored it because the imagery was so vivid and the meaning was rather relatable. I’ve spent my life always paying attention to the opening words and not the entirety of the poem. In the beginning of these words, Frost paints a picture of a person on a journey or a hike who’s looking at two paths before him/her. This person sizes up each path and then chooses one (the less traveled one) to use that day. I love this image of a person standing and pondering a decision in their life. I love this idea of trying to discover what will happen if we go this way or that. Many a movie has been filmed and many a book has been written about different choices we make in the past and how they impact our future. From time to time we’ve all questioned how different things could have been if we’d made this turn rather than that or if we’d stayed on this path rather than getting off. It’s a fascinating set of questions to ponder, but in the end, we need to see there’s seldom an option to go back and change our decisions.
See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:
blessing, if you obey the commandments of your God יהוה that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of your God יהוה, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.
(Deuteronomy 11:26 – 28)
These are the opening words of Parshat Re’eh, this week’s reading. There’s no way to read this other than God overtly told us we have a choice. We live lives of choices. In fact, it’s safe to say our lives are merely a series of decisions. Each one of those decisions leads to another series of options and so forth and so on. We’re blessed to make choices but at the same time this is actually a curse. The blessing is we have a semblance of control over our lives and what happens to us. I say semblance because we don’t have absolute control over forces of nature or the actions of other people. But we do in fact have some control. It’s a curse because often times we become dangerously paralyzed by the number of options we have to contend with on a daily basis. A trip to the grocery store can become a spiral of doom and gloom when we’re forced to decide between five or more varieties of our favorite cereal or ice cream. Just take a look and see how many different kinds of eggs are sold… spoiler alert: they all come from a chicken. The choices we have can be self-affirming or they can be quite alarming.
The paralysis sometimes leads us to create a false narrative claiming we’re helpless and without a choice in this world. That worldview is incorrect and needs to be put aside. Each and every one of us needs to see (ראה/Re’eh) that there are many decisions put before us and we’re in the driver’s seat to decide what the next choice is. Those decisions are indeed effected by others and by natural phenomena but that should never hold us back from choosing. We simply need to find it within ourselves to learn to choose wisely.
