“The road less traveled” is a misquoted phrase from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”.  That’s okay.  But let’s examine what this means.

Most people think it is “the road less traveled” because that’s their takeaway from the piece.  Of the two roads, he “took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” People think it’s a poem about doing the less popular thing because that will lead to a more interesting and perhaps more successful life.

But the title of the poem is The Road Not Taken.  It’s not The Road Less Traveled.  The road less traveled is the road that he ended up taking, but the “road not taken” is exactly that: a road not taken.

Viewed in this light, the poem becomes more about what wasn’t chosen, rather than what was chosen.  Every single person, every single moment of every single day has roads that don’t get taken.  This happens for a plethora of reasons, the main one being that time goes forward.

What Frost is saying to us isn’t an inspirational charge to lead a life of making choices against the grain.  What he’s saying is the simple fact that human beings have choices, and that those choices are what make up a life.  The last line of the poem, “And that has made all the difference” is an ironic one.  Of course it made all the difference because what else would it have made?

People are self-rationalizing beasts.  They will look back on something and inject whatever meaning they want so that it fits their purpose.  This is where the genius of Frost comes into play. “The road less traveled” is what people want the poem to be about, so that’s what they make it about, which is the very psychological process that Frost was bringing to the forefront with the poem in the first place.  In this, it operates on a level that most art never even comes close to.  It doesn’t represent.  It is.

But, then again, this is just me injecting my own meaning into the poem.  Looks like Bobby got me as well.

For good measure:

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;            5

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,            10

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.            15

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.            20

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