The Road Not Taken

I have the honor of teaching at a college, where one of the students wrote a very insightful essay on the Road Not Taken. In the essay, he quotes David Orr, the world's expert on the Road Not Taken. In fact, he even wrote a whole book on the 20 line, four stanza poem: "The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong."

He writes about America's misguided search for individualism, even at the price of self-delusion, the obsession with feeling that we've taken the "road less traveled by," even "when the passing there had worn them really about the same."

It seems like we can get an insight into our lives, perhaps slightly different from Orr's reading of "Road Not Taken" from this past week's Torah portion, Parshat Bo. In Judaism, it's the road taken that's most momentous, not the one not taken. 

As such, there are two mitzvot regarding the paschal offering in the parsha, that are extrapolated ever so beautifully by Sefer Hachinuch. He points to the little things that make such a far-reaching difference. It is forbidden to break a bone in the offering, because on the seder night, we are princely in our comportment, and breaking on a bone to suck on its marrow is the antithesis of freedom, and all the more so, regality. And likewise, writes the "Chinuch," on the seder night, juxtaposed with the sensation of freedom, we have to leave aside a small piece of matza, namely the afikoman, because a poor person always leaves aside a scrap or two, for the next meal. These activities, are essential writes the Chinuch because we see that even in the smallest of actions we can find great depth, symbolism and meaning. 

And so, it would seem, that rather than adopt Orr's reading of "Road Not Taken," perhaps it could be said that when Frost writes, "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same," that little difference - "about the same," and not "the same" - the smallest of difference had a meaning far beyond its apparent size. 

I humbly don't like Orr's interpretation. I don't think that good poets write poetry to wryly, and subtly, highlight society's flaws. It could be that the willingness to take a different path, even if it didn't prove all that different, is in of itself what "made all the difference," or even according to Orr, that the willingness to realize that we sometimes deceive ourselves places us a step above the rest. 

Regardless, whatever Frost intended, I'm not sure we'll know, but that notwithstanding, the regularity of the smallest of change can have implications inconceivable to the naked eye. Make no bones about it!