Ep. 137: "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

I heard the mathematician and intellectual Eric Weinstein talk about this poem recently, saying it is one of the most often misinterpreted pieces in the history of literature. The simple interpretation, and to Weinstein the wrong one, is that the road taken — “I took the one less travelled by” — is the unconventional path, and that the poem is an encouragement to take unconventional paths, to avoid following the crowd. To choose your path wisely.

A deeper interpretation, and to Weinstein, I think, the correct one, is that there is no conventional path. That your choice of path does not actually matter. In the poem, the two paths are “worn about the same”.

The background of the poem is a friendship Robert Frost had with Edward Thomas, a British poet. The pair took many walks together and in Frost’s words, his friend was “a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other”.

So the message of the poem is much less about choosing unconventional paths in life, and much more about the fact that way will lead on to way. That your choice of road will lead you ever forward, and the idea of yearning to have a second chance at a decision you’ve already made is utterly pointless.

So the message might be to keep moving forward, to understand that any rumination about the past is truly ridiculous, because the thing you imagine you might have had if things were different is both impossible now, and would in all likelihood never have happened anyway. In short, to hell with regrets.

You can read the poem here

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