A quiet moment

25 07 2010

I often take the time to take a quiet moment away from life’s day-to-day routine. And being away on this trip to Hong Kong helps me to do just that and reflect on the paths I have taken in life, and in doing so, I am reminded of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, a reflection that can only be a reflection, arriving at where we are only as a consequence of the roads we have taken. While we may as in the words of the poet, “tell with a sigh” of the road not taken, it is a road one which we can’t go back on. And certainly, in taking the road we have taken, whether less travelled or or not, makes the difference in our lives.

A quite moment to reflect.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood ...

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.

– Robert Frost, 1916