…and other big life decisions

I’ve recently decided to commit to applying to grad school. D: Maybe writing this here is a public accountability clause. Because, well… I’M SCARED!! Our 20s often feel like a shit show of constant doubt. I think decisions in this phase of life just feel so BIG sometimes, you know? It’s not only because we’re young, confused, and trying to figure things out for the first time, but it’s also because we’ve gained just enough life experience so far to know that one decision can be enough to lead us down a whole different life path. From which city we choose to live in to who becomes a housemate, the amount of opportunities that are laid out before us can either feel wildly liberating or downright paralyzing. And we know how initially small decisions–like a random class we enrolled in or which college we decided to attend–ended up changing the trajectory of our lives.

Think about all the decisions you made that led you to where you are now. You couldn’t see past the horizon of those choices until you chose something (arbitrarily or with your best judgment) and embarked. Once the fog cleared, you realized you were in a completely new place, with people you met either by chance or by fate, and you yourself had been changed. Call it invisible string theory, or the universe working in your favor, things came into your life one after the other as a result of minuscule decisions you didn’t even realize you were making, once. How you met your best friends, how you met your partner, how you met the people you love most, or came to do the things you love, somehow resulted from a series of small decisions or coincidences. So how do we approach a decision when we can feel its BIG-ness? 

Cliche, I know, but it’s been reminding me of the Robert Frost poem. Yes, the one everyone knows: “The Road Not Taken.” But the lines that have been lingering in my head these days are the ones we often overlook because of how famous the last three lines are, you know the ones.

The ones that have been in my mind more recently are at the poem’s beginning (the bolds are my own): 

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;

The speaker, just like myself and lots of indecisive people, looks down both paths for a long time, unable to decide, hoping to see where the paths lead, looking “as far as [they] could” to get some sort of estimate of where they’ll end up. Have you ever asked a friend what the vibes are at the function before you got fitted and ready to go, just so you could have some reassurance that you won’t regret coming out? How do we gauge a future we can’t see? What makes you decide to stay in versus go out? The speaker says they are “sorry [they] could not travel both” paths and remain “one traveler.” Man, me too. There’s so much to do and live and see.  Our lives are finite, and we cannot live all the lives we wish we could experience, or be all the people we wish we could be in our singular lifetimes. I think this overwhelming feeling gets to a lot of us in our twenties, when we get to a place of finding and deciding the answer to the big questions: who are we, who do we want to be, how do we want to spend this precious time–this precious youth–our lives? And more recently,

is it worthwhile anymore, especially with the state of the world, to postpone any of our dreams, no matter how ‘unrealistic’ they seem? Either way, we approach a point of decision.

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,

The speaker chooses the other path, claiming it “just as fair,” as the one he’s been pondering. But I think the main driver of the choice lies in the line of it having “perhaps the better claim,” the speaker’s reasoning being “Because it was grassy and wanted wear;”. He chooses the path he thinks is the better choice, emphasized by the word “perhaps”—the speaker still cannot be entirely sure. BUT what gets me is he realizes too that both paths seem worn “really about the same” amount. There is no real visible difference in the paths’ wear and use. There is either no actual difference, or there is no way for the speaker to know whether there is a difference. Regardless, he chooses based on his perception of the difference. 

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.

And after the speaker chooses based on his subjective reasoning, he says, too, that both paths that morning had “lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Both paths were equally untrodden, leaves still green and untouched. It is only the speaker’s perception of one being less travelled that he chooses–either an arbitrary choice or simply a subjective one! Why the speaker chooses the path (ostensibly) less travelled by is the main question of the poem, as well as what “difference” it has made, and the nature of that difference (good/bad), etc., (you could interpret this in many ways, as the poem has been for ages). 

The lines that really get me in this penultimate stanza recently though, are the ones I bolded:

“I kept the first for another day! / Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.”

One choice leads us down a road we may think we can return to, but we can’t. Once we make a choice, it seems to fundamentally change us as we follow through with it. We learn, we grow, and we change, as well as our surroundings. Having that semi-childish wish of “[keeping] the first [path] for another day,” is something impossible once we have the wisdom/experience of “knowing how way leads on to way” and how unlikely it is that we can “ever come back.” I think “how way leads on to way” is a beautiful way of putting this. 

The end of the poem ends as we’ve all heard it does: 

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.

What the difference is, I’ve always thought, was an invitation for us to find out for ourselves. To live our lives and make decisions for whatever reasons we think best. Even if one choice isn’t actually “better” than another, what matters is what you think is. Whether your reason is also to trod the less-travelled path, and believe there is a greater reward to a life lived that way, or whether you believe there is some other reason, only you can know–only you can choose. So…should I go to grad school? Try to get an MFA? Who knows! One just has to decide. Ask me ages and ages hence, and perhaps I’ll tell you with a sigh, what difference it has made.