Nearly everyone has heard the phrase, “The Road Less Traveled,” and yet, nearly everyone misses the true meaning of Robert Frost’s famous poem. If you find yourself at a crossroads in your career, this week’s Radical Stewardship™ blog post is for you. Your next step will make all the difference.

The Road Not Taken

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.”

We find these words plastered on T-shirts, framed on walls, and appended to email signature blocks. We take them as gospel truth that the less popular path is always the better choice. Heck, even Jesus tells us that the narrow, more challenging way is the one that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14). So, this must be what this poem is all about. Right…?

Did you know that Robert Frost’s famous poem isn’t even called, “The Road Less Traveled?” In a world where the average attention span is now measured in single digits, we’ve become so accustomed to consuming soundbites out of context that we often lose the main message. My friends, these three lines are a soundbite from Frost’s poem entitled, “The Road Not Taken.” Notice that the poem’s title doesn’t highlight the path that the narrator took, but the path that he didn’t choose. The road not taken. And the context goes deeper than that, taking us into the narrator’s emotions as he stood at that crossroads, his struggle to make a decision, and his doubts as he moved further down one path and further away from the other.

Whether you’re a poetry fan or not, I encourage you to pull up the words of “The Road Not Taken” and follow along with me. It just might help you to make your own decision and take that first step with confidence.

The Crossroads

Frost’s poem begins at a crossroads. “Two roads diverged….” You may be standing at a crossroads of your own. As you look ahead, there may be one path that’s obvious, a road that has been paved by others that seems easy to follow, a no-brainer. There may be one or more other paths that you can kind of make out, but you may have to step carefully, and you’re not sure exactly where they lead. Or you may be standing at the end of a road where a gate has just been slammed behind you and you don’t see a path forward at all, in any direction. Whatever your situation, there is no denying that you are at a crossroads, and as far as you can see, your choices appear to be some combination of: 1. follow the paved road; 2. follow the “less traveled” path; 3. blaze your own brand new trail; or 4. figure out how to crawl back under the gate that just slammed behind you and go back the way you came.

Let’s follow along with our poem’s narrator and see what happens next.

The Yellow Wood

Only five words into the poem, we learn that the roads diverged in a yellow wood. Why do you suppose Frost included those words? Does it impact the decision of which road the narrator takes? Does it have anything at all to do with his predicament? If not, why did Frost include this detail?

I believe Frost is nudging us to take in our surroundings. Instead of focusing immediately on analyzing what’s ahead, it’s helpful to take stock of where we are right now. What is true? What is beautiful in this situation? Are we in immediate danger, or can we pause for a minute to absorb our surroundings, breathe some fresh air, and think this situation through?

Note also the season that Frost places his narrator in. A yellow wood suggests a season change. Frost could have chosen any season, so what’s so meaningful about autumn?

The first thing the narrator observes is the changing of the leaves, the unmistakable and irreversible sign of the dying of things past. But there’s a certain beauty in this normal and necessary part of the circle of life. Until the old has died, the new can’t come forth. The death symbolized by the yellow wood carries a promise of new life.

Autumn is also a season of harvesting all that matured during the preceding summer. What can you harvest now from the season you’re just coming out of? Grab your baskets. Fill them with the fruit of all that you’ve learned, the relationships you’ve made, the growth you’ve experienced. Write these things down while they’re fresh. You’ll need those seeds for planting in springtime.

Autumn also signals the coming of winter. The yellow wood is a beautiful place to enjoy for a season, but it also puts us on notice that winter is coming. We can’t simply sit down at this crossroads and stay here indefinitely. We will need to choose a path shortly and move along or risk being caught out in the woods during the harshness of winter.

Long I Stood

Standing at the crossroads, Frost’s narrator takes his time to look down each path as far as he can see. He does his homework. He learns everything there is to know about his options. He doesn’t go racing down one path right away. He stands still. He evaluates.

What paths are you considering? What can you learn about them from where you are now? What research can you do online? What courses can you take? Who do you know who works in a similar role or who has gone down a similar path? Reach out to them. People love to share their stories, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how willing people will be to talk with you and share what they love about what they do, what they find challenging, and tips about who else you should talk with and how you might learn more.

Both That Morning Equally Lay

Here, we begin to approach the heart of the poem. The narrator has stood at his crossroads for some time. He’s considered each path carefully, being first enamored with one, then with the other, vacillating between the two. You can feel his struggle. He wishes he could somehow travel both, but that’s impossible. From where he stands, he can see as far as where the roads bend up ahead, but he can’t discern anything after that. Try as he might to settle on a favorite, he keeps circling back to the same conclusion: that each road is just as fair as the other.

So what does Frost’s narrator do? He chooses a path. He takes a step, and he begins to walk. At some point, we all must take a step. If we don’t, we’ll find ourselves still at this crossroads, exposed to the elements, when winter comes.

Way Leads on to Way

From the moment Frost’s narrator takes his first step, he finds himself in trouble, and here is where we can learn some very important lessons from the poem.

The first lesson we learn is through the narrator’s lack of full commitment to his choice. The moment the narrator begins down one path, he immediately doubts his decision. His mind remains divided between the two paths, leaving him unable to focus on the path he’s on. It is important for us to invest the time needed to learn what we can in order to make a decision, but once a decision is made, we need to commit our attention and resources to that decision. If we don’t, we will miss the scenery, the trail markers, and the opportunities that will make our chosen journey a success. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1:8 (KJV).

The second lesson we learn is the narrator’s observation about way leading onto way. Frost’s narrator accurately perceives that the farther we get down one road, the less likely it becomes that we will ever return to the other. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to change paths. There are very few career decisions in life that are truly irrevocable, and there are some decisions that we might just need to back out of. But the narrator makes a valid point that once we get a little momentum going and get some miles under our belt, we become less and less inclined to choose a different path, and traversing to another path becomes more and more challenging the further away we get from that crossroads. This speaks to the importance of not racing down one road too quickly, but taking the time to take full advantage of our crossroads moment and think through our options as best we can. Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way. Proverbs 19:2 (ESV).

The third lesson we learn from this part of the poem is what happens when we become too worried about other people judging our choices. In the last stanza, the narrator becomes hyper-concerned with what other people will think about his decision. Surely, he can’t tell people the truth: that both paths looked about the same, both looked equally worn, and he just randomly picked one. That doesn’t sound very smart or responsible. So he makes up a story that he can have ready to tell in the future, one that will make his choice sound more rational. In that one long em dash (which Frost added to the poem between its first and second printing), the narrator concocts in his mind the following story: one road was actually less traveled than the other, and choosing the less traveled road is what made all the difference. This story, this lie, is the soundbite that we love to hang on our walls!

Taking a Step

So, what can we do when we’re standing at a crossroads and we don’t know which way to go? Here’s where you and I have something that Frost’s narrator didn’t take advantage of. We have the ability to seek guidance from the Lord. That guidance can come directly from Holy Spirit. It can come through the Word. It can come through prayer. It can come through the wise counsel of others. But we have a role in this too: we must seek that guidance. Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” The verb tense in the language that Jesus spoke is similar to our progressive tense in English: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Our job is to steward our crossroads moment and keep taking our requests for guidance to God as we watch Him illuminate each next step.

Now, God might not show us the whole path all at once. Just like the narrator in Frost’s poem, we may only be able to see as far as the first bend. But until we leave the crossroads and take those first steps, all roads remain the road not taken, and we will miss everything! So, do your best to collect the information that you can, seek the Lord’s counsel, and then take that first step. It is often through the taking of that first step that God will reveal the next one, and then with the next one, He will reveal the step after that, and so on, and so on.

Here are some scriptures to meditate over as you seek God’s guidance for your next step:

• Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
• Psalm 32:8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”
• Isaiah 30:21 “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.”
• Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
• Psalm 37:23-24 “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.”
• Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.”

If you’d like help deciding between paths and taking your own first step, I encourage you to check out my coaching page or connect with me directly. I’d love to walk with you!