The Road Taken – March 07, 1999
Choosing the right road at the beginning of a journey will more likely ensure reaching the right destination. A man boarded a bus with the clear intention of going to a large eastern city. At the end of a long trip, he found himself not in the East but in another city far south. He had taken the wrong bus. He knew where he wanted to go before he started the journey, but alighting at the destination, he found himself somewhere else. He discovered that choosing the beginning of a road, even if by mistake, is also choosing the place where it leads.
Good intentions don’t always mean that the right road will be chosen. Most people intend good things from their lives: happiness, respect from their friends, a fine family life, and productive work. But they start down a wrong road, thinking only to try it out or to go halfway. They often find they can’t stop where they thought they could and find it difficult to turn back. Choosing to start down a road is also choosing the place where it leads.
Clear goals and future hopes can guide us to the right road. If we don’t start with a destination in mind, we may find ourselves at a crossroads with two paths stretching onward in opposite directions. The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland said, “If you don’t much care where you want to go, it doesn’t really matter which path you take.”1
Starting on the right road means we pay attention to where we are going and not become distracted with the cares or the busyness of our lives.
As the poet Robert Frost discerned:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. . . .
I took the one . . . ,
And that has made all the difference.2
Making the right choices at the beginning of each road will help us reach the right destination, and that will make all the difference in our lives.
Program #3629
1See Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (New York: Philomel Books, 1989), 64.
2“The Road Not Taken,” The Poetry of Robert Frost, Ed. Edward Connery Lathem (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 105.