Two Paths

I can still remember my first day of high school at Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, CT. I remember getting very little sleep the night before. I remember have a nosebleed when I woke up. I remember sitting in Dr. Smith's senior English class for a full 15 minuets before having the stones to stand up and walk out!

I also remember my actual freshman year English teacher, Mr. Bob Kirk. I remember how he announced that instead of following the usual curriculum for 9th grade English, grammar, we would be studying American Lit. I remember how on the first day of class he broke down in tears as he told us a story about a "first day" that he had, namely his first day as a soldier in Vietnam. That story is still so vivid in my mind some 15 years later...

Something else I remember about Mr. Kirk is that he was the one who introduced me to Robert Frost. Frost is probably best remembered for his poem "The Road Not Taken," first published in 1916. The text follows:

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.

I don't know why, but every time I think of this poem now, I'm reminded of the two paths that another work of literature speaks on, namely, the Gospel of Matthew. Recording the words of Jesus, Matthew writes that there are two paths, one narrow that leads to salvation, and the other broad, leading to destruction.

So few, happening upon the narrow road choose to follow it. In the words of Robert Frost, I-I took the one less traveled by, and that has indeed made all the difference!