“I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Rummaging through the wise words of a celebrated poet whose popularity is unmatched in the chronicles of American poetry, we stumble upon Robert Frost, who is often liked but for the wrong reasons: a poet who is read much, albeit not very carefully. The precise wit of his articulation, his broad humour and his frequent despair are too often overlooked for his regional-ness, his folksiness and his public persona. As quoted previously, Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ has simply got to be among the best-known and coincidentally one of the most-misunderstood poems in the history of literature. Accursed with a flawless marriage of form and content, arresting phrases wrought from simple words and reverberating metaphor, it seems as if the poem indeed gets memorised without really being read, for which it has died the cliché’s un-death of frivolous immortality.
The scintillating wit possessed by Frost focuses in an out-of-the-ordinary manner whilst it is believed to be meaning that ‘when you come across a fork in the road, take the one less travelled by’. In essence, there is no road less travelled by in the poem; there is not even a choice at all. One of the allures of the poem is its illustrative dilemma, one that we instantly recognise because each of us encounters it countless times. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and entrenched metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolise for us the nexus of free will and fate; we are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an amassment of choice and prospect; and it is impossible to separate the two.
As we step into the next realms of our educational career, many of us are met with one of the most crucial decisions of student life; choosing where to see ourselves in future. Excluding rare cases of mastery, it is incredibly noteworthy that this is one of the most important forks we have to choose between in our lives that shall largely determine how our lives will be shaped in future. With thousands of alternatives presented to a student who has simply been asked to study compulsorily all the subjects until a certain grade; how accurate of a decision can be made by a student. Beyond this simple, prototypical question, the point that needs to be raised is just how suitable can the final decision be for a student who has simply been influenced much more than necessary by peers, parents, relatives, just anybody.
Elementally, the most significant action for a student in such a case is realisation of where for real his/her vehemence actually lies. This realisation is often met with the need of recognition, to which there is no way but one. In contemporary times, true happiness has often been overlooked with the desperation to be successful, recognised, affluent or prominent. But when one thinks of a decision with all the hard work, they might have to do to reach such success; whether the tough grind can be stomached by oneself or not is the answer to how valid such a choice would be for them. And the key to shortening the list of available options down is where your interests particularly lie.
Only with utmost regret, a guileless child is pushed into careers they might not really want to pursue. There is no way out. Such a candidate being unable to be truly happy in life is beyond any doubt. While particularly our country has been battling such a situation where a student is forced to believe that beyond a medical or engineering line, there is simply no way to survive. Such barefaced lies posed to a child by his or her parents are what have actually troubled a student in their later lives. When we look at the world with no ulterior motives, we begin realising that this world indeed is made up of several people contributing to build an elaborate and self-sufficient system all on their own, unique ways!
It’s tragic that we indeed live in a country which chastises the most basic and fundamental of all jobs. However, what is more pathetic is that this has eventually resulted in the formation of a vicious cycle where a child is trained to believe that not all jobs are respect-worthy, which later provokes a similar manipulation of another individual’s mind in the next generation. Such a malicious chain of thoughts would only elicit several health complications both at the mental and physical levels of the child, who’d submit to depression, mental stress, anxiety, nervousness and toxic ways of over-thinking due to the onerous pressure on part of a parent. It’s time a student realises that he/she is the artist of his/her own life; and they should never let the paintbrush into anybody else’s hands.
The educational system is in approbation of the child and seeks to uncover their talents and espouse progress is true education. When the child is at liberty to tread on the heels of his/her passion, their inherent consciousness thrives into a mind full of revolutionary ideas that would serve to be stepping stones to take us closer to the utopian dream we have been trying to nurture.