And be one traveler

First of all I would like to say that it entertains me that the random person or bot or whatever it was elected to post a comment that begins "this post is likeable" on a post that I deleted. Saves me the trouble of having any doubt about whether it was a legit comment or not.

Second of all, I would like to briefly comment upon the following oft-commented-upon poem:

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.

Unfortunately this poem is shoved upon us when we are in middle school or high school, and we're told it's one of the best poems ever, but we don't really care, and it just sounds kind of cliched to us, because, well, isn't that image of two roads diverged in a wood just like, a standard metaphor that everyone uses? And it doesn't necessarily occur to us that maybe that cliche actually comes from this poem. (Does it? I feel like someone must have used the image before this particular poem...) In any case, I never felt I got much out of it.

But I was talking with my mom yesterday about choices and regret and the existence of glimmering alternate universes that have no chance of becoming reality, but just float in our minds tantalizingly. And she relayed to me what a high school English teacher of hers said about this poem, and I found it quite interesting. She said (the teacher) that she felt people, when talking about the poem, often focused on the specific choice made, the outcome, the taking of one path as opposed to the other. And a lot of people, especially in the sort of popular culture interpretation of the poem, seem to take the overall message as being about the choice to take the less popular road. But if you read the poem carefully, of course, there's really not that much difference between the paths. And there's certainly no indication that this "difference" made by taking the one road was a positive rather than negative difference. All of this was covered in my own high school English classes, but here's the slight twist that my mom's teacher put on it that I like: she said that she found it more powerful if she read it as a poem about the existence of these two divergent paths, one of which must be foregone. And then it isn't about making the right choice or wrong choice; it's about the inevitable feeling of loss that comes with making any choice, even if the path you end up on is a good one. Even if you don't end up wishing you'd made the other choice. You still missed out on something, and it can still hurt.

So with that reading, I personally get more out of this poem. Maybe just because I've been feeling a bit of that pain, and having a somewhat hard time explaining it to people. "It's not that I'm unhappy with things as they are, or that I would change anything if I could," I told Eric Friday night. "Then what is the problem?" he reasonably asked. "It's just that I see this alternate universe of possibilities that can just never happen in reality," I attempted. "Well then you need to let go of those possibilities." Logical advice. But not helpful. I can't let go of possibilities that exist, that I can see through some sparse trees in another part of the woods but can't quite get to. And wouldn't choose to get to if it meant losing the path I'm on. But I can't stop them from existing. And I can't stop their existence from hurting. But it's a pain inherent to life and inherent to forming connections with people, and I would never trade it for apathy. I don't think that makes any sense to Eric, somehow. To him I think it seems as though I'm manufacturing frustration for myself for no defensible reason. Maybe I'll try explaining it to him with a poem...lol.

There's already a poem in this post, so maybe I don't need to close with song lyrics, but what the hell, when in doubt, always quote MISERY:

Yoru no yami ni ochite yukeba wasureta shimau koto na no kamo;
Yureru omoi, tsuka no ma no yume, chiisana higeki.
Furu hoshi no kazu kazoetara naku no ni aki darou;
Warau tsuki no aosa kizu o nadete tojite yuku...