Robert Frost had it wrong.
When is there every just 2 roads? When? I’ve yet to see that option. Just two?! Please. When has life offered just two? Even shopping for fabric softener you have dozens of choices! There is no such thing as two roads. No such thing I say.
Often you can’t even count the roads. So many roads. So many options. So many choices. So many possible future regrets. So many unknowns.
And tomorrow we start to determine roads. So many roads. Each scan will lay multiple roads, multiple paths, dozens of treatment options. Radiation? What type? DFMO?
So thank you Frost for attempting to sum up human choice. I remember hearing this poem for the first time in Ms. Fowler’s English class in 8th grade. I thought it was beautiful. I thought it told the story of all those moments in life where you have choice. I thought it spoke truth, but now I know better. You sold me a simple version of the truth. One that is more digestible. But life is not like that.
Life is complicated and you usually don’t get 50/50 odds.
Robert- below is a revised version.
Countless roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And we want to travel none
But had to as there is no choice
We look down each as far as we could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took one of the countless others, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better future claim,
Because it had statistics and diagrams;
Though as for that the passing there
Had results them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, picking one discounts the other!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
We should never come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh (and a drink)
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Countless roads diverged in a wood, and we—
We took the one less traveled,
And that has made all the difference.
You’re welcome Frosty.
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