One whose boots bear the mud of the road less traveled by, should carry also a loam of ideas less thought of.
Today’s blog involves simple musings over Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken.
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.
This bifurcation stands as metaphor for the fantabulated drama of self-deception which the bromidic mind plays upon those who fall prey to its choices for their lives.
You see, Frost was lamenting the snare of commonplace experience; the de rigeur mud clung fast to the boots of those who all to frequently chose the road not taken.
You perceived yourself to be an edgy rebellious urban young person, but then proceeded to do exactly the same thing that every one else did. They call it rationality in the circles where the fakers rule thought. Each perceives himself as poetic hero, choosing boldly the path not taken – only to find in reality that the hero’s every step, every word, every thought, his or her every brave deed – all of the original vim and vigor he so earnestly judged to be harvested as gold from deepest settlings of pure soul – was canned, processed, packaged and swallowed as a manufactured product. Not only was their every action not of their own crafting, but each had been done, thought, expressed and believed millions to billions of times over. The road not taken betrays itself to be in actuality, the path most frequently followed – so oft traversed as to become itself, trite, hollow and clichéd.
Do you hear the chuckling of unseen mocking, bemused by such pretense? You see, a man can accept the ill fate of his choices, the wages of risk and a life served fearlessly; but what he cannot accept is to find that in the end, his suffering constitutes simply the latest meaningless bray in a long line of unheeded cautionary lore. No battles won, no hills surmounted, no dragons vanquished. Simply another sword and bones bleaching upon the heap of banal and spent humanity. The danger in our mind resides not simply in its ability to create phantoms of credulousness; instead, its greatest weakness expresses through a habit of creating mirrors which serve to echo reality back upon itself. To reassure the passenger that all is as was originally understood – an understanding which compels us to the pass the infection on to others.
This our most insidious of illness; a pathology of unfamiliarity gauged only through its illusions of symptomatic wellness.
In Frost’s poem, there exist two roads: 1. the road less traveled by, and the subject of the poem, 2. the road not taken. You see, Frost’s poetic hero chose the road less traversed upon, so the road he elected to decline, was, quod erat demonstrandum, The Road Not Taken.
Skeptic’s Tell
One whose boots bear the mud of the road less traveled by, should carry also a loam of ideas less thought of.
/philosophy : argument : deception/ : a skeptic who has examined them self first, should never seek out dispute, fail to seek some essence of understanding, straw man, used canned explanations and party agendas, find entertainment in argument nor mock objective dissent in order to provide an ideological advantage for favored views. Instead, the seasoned skeptic should actually go into the field and dispassionately observe, be an autodidact despite their education background, bear new thoughts along with a compassion for those harmed, foremost. These are the sign posts on the road less traveled by; the telltale sign of whether or not one is a true skeptic.
Sign Posts One Should Have Read on The Road Less Traveled By
1. He chuckles at the impending gravitas of a ‘disagreement’.
2. The loneliness of the path less traveled, earns one a deep appreciation for engagement and understanding.
3. One who has fallen victim to harmful misrepresentation, will wish to place no one else in the same predicament.
4. The feet weary of such heterodox scramble and scaled mountain, seldom find arguing to be invigorating entertainment.
5. Anyone who has traversed the road less traveled should possess some ideas less thought of.
6. He cannot help but be an autodidact; fully realizing that this is ironically the essence of every learned and wise man.
7. His realization is that it is certainty, which is killing us more assuredly than is the unknown.
8. If you were once on the right and switched over to the left path, then you should
a. understand the path you departed, much better than do your peers (never allow straw man), and
b. possess a keener understanding of why you are on the path which you have chosen, as compared to your peers – who simply inherited it (never use canned, memorized or scripted party talking points).
9. Stand in the gap for those who are harmed, above all else.
10. Always smile; never mock.
These are the signposts one has read, if indeed they have taken the path less traversed. The majority of those who claim such – wishfully clamor on the whitewashed bones of commonplace destiny.
