Life is full of dilemmas. Inevitably, we must make decisions without the help of a crystal ball when we come to a fork in a road. As time goes by, sometimes we regret; sometimes we wish we had taken another path. But life goes on.

The Road Not Taken by American Poet Robert Frost vividly illustrates the existential despair of a human being in a world fraught with uncertainties. Whilst the poem ends on a sad note, I have a different outlook. In face of life’s precariousness, we must keep our head up and brace ourselves for the challenges. There is no other way.

Do you have the courage to take the road “less traveled by”, which will make “all the difference”?

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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.