The Road Not Taken

One of my favourite poems, yet so ever relevant. Medicine especially is career with ever branching sub-specialties and sub-sub-specialties. Sometimes I wonder if I could ever not be doctor. What would I be?

You know I first read this poem when I was in still high school learning Literature in English (yeah it's different from English Literature, I'm serious!). Amazing really how this poem has stayed with me all these years...and after all those decisions that I have had to make at that time. Doesn't seem so long ago really, but like Frost, I too know that I can't go back in time and change my path anymore. Still I have a long way to go and my path I know has not ended but sometimes, sometimes; I wonder what I would see if I had taken the other paths.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - Robert Frost
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.

First published December 1995; published July 1999 by Bartleby.com; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. (Terms of Use).