Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think it's in us to consider the road or roads not taken. Frost's narrator seems to be at least middle aged or older and in the title contemplating the choice he did not pursue, perhaps with some regret and certainly with some curiosity. The price of any choice we make is surrender of the alternatives, and I think he signifies that with a sigh.
As the poem progresses there's less and and less and then almost no difference between the roads as he sees them now. I think the poem shows his perspective changing in those evolving estimates of the difference in the two roads. Either time has taught him that the differences were mostly appearance, or perhaps time is fooling him into believing that now.
The lines,
Oh I kept the first (path) for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
suggest that as he chose he almost lied to himself that he could come back to this point again, knowing he wouldn't. Couldn't. Rather than regret I think Frost laments the nature of important choices. They have such power to shape our lives and we often struggle to see alternatives clearly. To choose wisely.
I have a life motto which is "Never unnecessarily limit your options." I mean, we DO limit options often (for instance, when we choose to be in a monogamous relationship, or when we choose one vehicle over all others) but my big thing is LEAVE AS MANY OPTIONS ON THE TABLE FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.
I agree with what you're saying by the way. This is one of my very favorite poems.
I have a life motto which is "Never unnecessarily limit your options." I mean, we DO limit options often (for instance, when we choose to be in a monogamous relationship, or when we choose one vehicle over all others) but my big thing is LEAVE AS MANY OPTIONS ON THE TABLE FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.
I agree with what you're saying by the way. This is one of my very favorite poems.
I love the poem too.
Some choices do practically speaking eliminate others. And some wise person said that almost all big decisions are made with insufficient data. Or experience, wisdom. Sometimes we don't know what our choices mean for our futures. I've made a few of those.
I feel about those choices a bit like I feel when I realize something is over. I'm thinking of things that don't have a clear end point by their nature, but the ending can be seen in retrospect. Like at 63 I know I'm not young and I'm clinging to the delusion that I'm middle aged, but in all seriousness there was a point in my 50s when I realized I was no longer young and hadn't been for a while. Was there a last day of my youth?
I think those early choices we make often create endings we don't recognize or acknowledge. Maybe knowing that would make choosing that much harder. There's a poem I've always liked by Donald Justice. It's very male and middle class in tone, but if you squint a little it can apply to anyone.
Men at Forty
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices trying
His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
I think it's in us to consider the road or roads not taken. Frost's narrator seems to be at least middle aged or older and in the title contemplating the choice he did not pursue, perhaps with some regret and certainly with some curiosity. The price of any choice we make is surrender of the alternatives, and I think he signifies that with a sigh.
As the poem progresses there's less and and less and then almost no difference between the roads as he sees them now. I think the poem shows his perspective changing in those evolving estimates of the difference in the two roads. Either time has taught him that the differences were mostly appearance, or perhaps time is fooling him into believing that now.
The lines,
Oh I kept the first (path) for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
suggest that as he chose he almost lied to himself that he could come back to this point again, knowing he wouldn't. Couldn't. Rather than regret I think Frost laments the nature of important choices. They have such power to shape our lives and we often struggle to see alternatives clearly. To choose wisely.
It's a beautiful poem. I don't think Frost ever gave us the answer because I doubt he had one.
"God knows I'm not perfect, either. I've made tons of stupid mistakes, and later I regretted them. And I've done it over and over again, thousands of times; a cycle of hollow joy and vicious self-hatred. But even so, every time I learned something about myself." ~ Misato Katsuragi
There is an entity among the Southern native tribes in the US, the Rabbit. The rabbit is the trickster, like the Coyote in the West is. When you encounter the Trickster, you know you can have a good experience, or a bad experience, but either way, you are going to learn a lesson.
I guess regret is a natural part of learning about ourselves. It is our ego's way of voicing how it feels about the experience we just had.
I guess regret is a natural part of learning about ourselves. It is our ego's way of voicing how it feels about the experience we just had.
While my life has overall been good there are times I badly want a do-over, sometimes for my benefit and sometimes for the benefit of people I love. And sometimes both.
(from above link, excerpt) In 1981, a young American man named Bruce was on a train journey through northern France when a pretty brunette called Sandra boarded at Paris and sat next to him. Conversation came easily, and they were soon laughing and holding hands.
When they reached her destination – a station in Belgium – they kissed, and on an impulse, Bruce considered jumping off the train with her to see where life may lead him. Instead, he quickly scribbled his name and parents’ address on a scrap of paper.
Almost as soon as the doors had closed, Bruce regretted not having gone with his gut feeling. After his return to the US, he received a letter from Sandra. “Maybe it’s crazy, but when I think about you, I’m smiling,” it said, but – mysteriously – contained no return address. In the decades since that encounter, Bruce has never stopped wondering what might have happened if he’d stepped down onto that platform.
I have often thought about the topic of regrets, see Regrets, I've had a few But then again, too few to mention (but don't start singing). This recent BBC post raises many interesting and tantalizing issues.As for the linked excerpt a few questions arise:
Was either in a committed relationship which could have been scuppered by a random fling;
Would there at some point have been a major culture or linguistic barrier? One cannot find out much about another person even during a four-hour train ride;
Were there major educational difference; and, among others
Did either have major "issues" that would surface over a longer time that would not be obvious from a short train ride?
One can easily fashion an idealized statue of a person that they have a fleeting encounter with. It is not possible, in life, to explore in depth every possibility that becomes available.
I try to limit my regrets to lost opportunities to help others, and causing people injury in any manner. Over my almost 65 years, I could catalog many lost opportunities, from not buying stock in Amazon in 2001 to my choice of college electives or law schools. These range from the trivial to the profound.
I don't regret much at all. I'm 67 and my life has had its ups and downs, some self-inflected, but I'm extremely happy to be where I am, and that bumpy path got me here. I can't waste time ruminating about "what could have been," because it wasn't.
Every time I put my head on the pillow at night, I can't help going over every stupid thing I've ever done in my life. Some big things, some small things. It's a long list. I don't have to think about the same regret every night. It sucks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Regret is often seen as undesirable, but it’s a crucial emotion in helping us develop.
