How are you living?

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;
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,
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.
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.

                                           Robert Frost

I am hoping that this particular poem is very familiar to most, as it is so familiar to me. I'm going to focus on the most famous line here, which I'm sure everyone has heard, and used. “The road less travelled” has been a phrase so often used that it is virtually cliché. To take the road less travelled is to...tread the path less worn..? I suppose it is just such a cliché that there really is no other way of saying it. While this seems like a great thing to do, our culture says otherwise. The media tends to try and make clones. Everyone has to have the so-called “perfect body” for their respective sexes, have a job that allows you to be able to buy a new wardrobe every season, a perfect family and a nice car parked in the driveway of your house (that incidentally sports a white-picket fence). Anything out of the ordinary is...well...out of the ordinary. And not in a good way. I hope that I am wrong for the most part, but it's hard not to think that way when you're flipping through the latest issue of Cosmo, or People.  So check how you're living!  Are you "off the beaten path", as it were, or are you living in the mainstream?


What do you think? Am I too critical of the media? Also, what else did you get from this poem?