Thoughts on language...

Paths

Robert Frost famously wrote, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," and continued to elaborate this homely metaphor until ending with, "And that has made all the difference."

Each of us is on a path through existence, and may at any moment pause to assess its divergences.

Each possible path is, by definition, unique, and each moment, each pause, each now, offers a new divergence. Life is defined by the accumulation of such decision points, such divergences.

There is always a spectrum of possibilities. Normally the path of highest probability is the one we follow, with no conscious attention on this choice. But when life offers us distinct possibilities with similar enough probabilities of being favorable, we may pause, as Frost did, and evaluate the likely outcomes.

Thus we each build our own unique life experience.

At least, that is my assessment in this moment.

Frost said it better: 

Show don't tell. Then it's up to the reader to pay attention. 

Or merely absorb subliminally. 

You can know something agrees with you (or you with it) without knowing why.

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(Here's the complete poem:)

The Road Not Taken

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.