The Road Not Taken

 

The term “the road less traveled” has often meant different things for different writers. A travel writer in the Straits Times in 2006 used it to evoke the adventure of lesser known destinations. Others have used it to define a course of action or life that is not in keeping with society’s norms.

The phrase was made popular by M Scott Peck, the best-selling psychiatrist, therapist and self-awareness author who wrote the “Road Less Traveled” series in the 1980s through 1990. M Scott who, you might ask? Arguably, the present post-Generation Xers, brought up on a diet of Anthony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki and Napoleon Hill would not be aware of his work. But more of that later.

The origin of the phrase came from the poem “The Road Not Taken” by the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, Robert Frost who lived from 1874-1963. Frost was noted for his poetic reflections of rural New England, and possibly the only poet to have recited his work at an American Presidential Inauguration (J F Kennedy’s in 1961).

Born in San Francisco, he spent his formative years in urban Massachusetts, and later England, before returning to live and write on a New Hampshire farm. His work was based on his observations and reflections in rural New England. Acclaimed works like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “Mending Wall”, or “Birches” convey to the reader the backdrop for his work.

In reading about the Frost’s palette, one is reminded of the renowned Singapore finger painter, the late Dr Chen Wen Hsi, who drew inspiration from the North Face of his Kingsmead family garden.  Imagery is not limited by the immediacy of our geography, a little red dot.

 

In Frost’s: The Road Not Taken (1916)”, he wrote

 

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.

 

Anyone who has trekked the undergrowth of Ubin or MacRitchie, on a humid dew-strewn morning will also appreciate the critical decision-point evoked by Frost’s lines.

But the poem is startling not for its realism but for its metaphor. A life’s journey, with no great certainty of the future and the choices we make. The road less traveled, once entered, leads us onto the next and yet another, setting us off on a path, perhaps of continual responsibility and personal growth (or perhaps not). As we steer forward, to live in regret or to hope to re-visit an earlier turn of decision?  Unlikely.

The poem’s ending speaks for itself – a final accounting or tally. Perhaps better to take a firm handle on the path chosen, and to make a difference wherever we to go. In ending, the Road Not Taken reminds us years hence to take a final tally, pausing to reflect on the choices we made in life and perhaps the choices that have led us to go with what we believe to be right – never mind that we walk alone – and the differences we made.

 

And what of M Scott Peck and his trilogy of “The Road Less Traveled” books? His message rallies us to look at life as a journey of personal and spiritual growth, with the mantra that there are no easy paths to an examined life. The trilogy simplified reads: “Life is not simple; Life is complex; there are no easy solutions.”  How true.

Yet, today, if you visit warehouse book sales, you will find his work going at a bargain, along with the collected works of Dale Carnegie and others from an earlier genre.

Dr Peck, whose work was immensely popular in the late 80s and early 90s, has had his work archived at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Colorado. His last book, on psychoanalyzing evil, was published in 2005. He passed away in September 2005, of illnesses related to Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic and bile duct cancer.

In recent years, his works has all but disappeared from the shelves in Singapore. One suspects that his message, while as relevant today as it was 25 years ago, cannot compete with the other secular motivational work that is so popular today because it does not address some of the populist themes of modern motivation – success, (financial) security, enjoying the fruits, and fulfillment or retirement (from vocation but not from life). Indeed, hardly the stuff of the road less traveled.

But one also suspects another reason for the decline of Dr Peck’s work – the public liberation of a private life. Adam Khoo, the local wunderkind of teenage motivation recognized this as much when he wrote in a 2006 Straits Times interview about walking the talk and the need to be a constant role model for the young charges he motivates.  Scott Peck on the other hand was frank in his semi-autobiography, “In Search of Stones”, in which he hinted at his early marital infidelity, his alcoholic and smoking dependences and his troubled relationships with some of his children in his personal life journey. Hardly the imagery of a motivational leader, notwithstanding the appeal of his message.

Yet, in the final analysis, perhaps the success of those who travel a journey of increasing consciousness cannot be measured on modern society’s norms – surely a contradiction in terms! The alternative meaning of having arrived is not to count the medals and hide the wounds of an arduous journey, but to love and accept ourselves and others for who we were, to have examined ourselves honestly and found wanting, and to celebrate what we have become, warts included.

 

After all, was it not the seminal motivational speaker who said, “The Truth shall set you free”

 

Written in 28 March 2005, updated 6 May 2006, updated for thesimplereflections 27 Dec 2017

(Nikon D40; 2009 Lijiang, Yunnan)