The Road Not Taken – A Cautionary Tale

‘The Road Not Taken’ – a poem by 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;

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 took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some years ago I met someone who had studied this poem at university. He thought that Frost was mocking himself. I hadn’t looked at the poem much and didn’t do so then. I said something or other in reply – and I defended ‘the road less travelled’ probably because it is the more romantic and adventurous road.

Being aware of my defensiveness on that occasion made me look at the poem again, recently.

The Road Not Taken

So, he stood a while thinking about which road to take. And for a reason that was part of his makeup he decided to take the lesser road, precisely because it was the lesser road.

And having taken it, now he sees that a long time in the future when he is old, he will say that taking that path made all the difference and he will say it with a sigh.

Why a sigh? After all, he is seeing all this having taken the road.

Will he sigh because it doesn’t matter which path he takes, ever?

Will he sigh because once again he spent too much time thinking about paths?

Will he sigh because he feels the weight of his own makeup leading him down wrong paths?

He believes he can’t turn back – he explained already how ‘way leads on to way’ – that there are consequences and that when a fateful move it made, there is no going back.

Is that even right that one cannot turn back

I don’t have to be so literal. Frost is a poet. It doesn’t have to be an actual wood. The wood can be a metaphor for life. And the paths can be paths between any choices. A choice to get fit or not to get fit. To take a job in a bank or become an artist. To get off here or continue to the usual bus stop. The list is endless.

C Is For Creance

When my wife Tamara was reading H Is For Hawk by Helen MacDonald, the story of the author’s life with a goshawk, she asked me whether I knew the meaning of the word, creance, which she had read about in the book.

I didn’t but I guessed that it might mean the act of behaving well. I guessed it from miscreant, which is the name of course for someone who does wrong.

Tamara told me that a creance is the long piece of cord that a trainer uses to maintain control of a hawk in training.

It got me thinking that there may be a connection with miscreant, so I looked up the etymology of the word.

And it turns out that a micreant is not only a wrongdoer but also someone who lacks faith.

And creance, which originated in the late 15th century comes from the French word créance which mean ‘faith’ – and describes the cord used to retain a bird of peu de créance – of little faith – a bird which cannot yet be relied upon to return to its handler.

Social Justice – Social Injustice

In the 1980s, the then Prime Minister famously declared that there is no such thing as society. She encouraged a free-for-all so that people would claw themselves higher. Of course, it came at the expense of ordinary working people who were not very good at clawing.

They didn’t have the advantage of money or power or friends in the right places.

They were simply consigned to the rubbish heap.

How can anyone expect people to care when the society is run by self-seekers? People aren’t stupid – they know when they are being robbed blind.

And the dominance of big business doesn’t help to make anyone feel they are a meaningful member of society.

Yes, it is for each person to bear responsibility for their personal actions and to behave ethically no matter what they see around them – or at least to do so as much as possible.

But responsibility and allegiance are not the same – and people are trying to survive in the cracks left in the framework of a system that doesn’t care about them.

People will put up with a lot when they know that they share the burden with everyone. But when social and economic justice are absent – anyone will question why he or she should owe allegiance to anything.

Why Russia Has Been Bombing ISIS

Russia has a naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. And if the Asad regime goes, so might Russia’s base.

The base is Russia’s only refuelling depot in the Mediterranean. Without it, Russia’s naval vessels would have to refuel and refit on the Black Sea and exit via Turkey, which is of course a member of NATO.

There is of course, Sebastopol – a Russian naval base on the Black Sea. In 2010, Russia and Ukraine ratified a treaty that gave Ukraine access to Russian gas in exchange for an extension of Russia’s lease of the base at Sebastopol through to 2042, with options to extend for further five-year periods beyond that.

Then came the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

There are differing views of what the Ukrainian revolution was and is about. Is it a country that wants to express its democratic wish to join the West? Is it a country run by gangsters and opportunists banked by Western companies that see opportunities for a new market if Ukraine joins the Western club?

What you think depends on who you read.

Was Russia’s action in annexing Crimea a long-term plan crafted to look like a democratic response to the Ukrainian revolution? Or was it was a reasonable response to a desire by the Russian-population of the Crimea not be dragged away from mother Russia?

Again, what you think depends on who you read.

One thing is clear though and that is that the 2014 Ukrainian revolution put the Russian gas-for-bases treaty at risk. And without Sebastopol, Russia would have to rely on its Black Sea port at Odessa. Sebastapol has a much more equable climate. Odessa is further away from the Mediterranean and it is ice bound in winter.

So putting all this together, Russia is protecting Sebastapol and Tartus. And against that backdrop, and whatever other motivation it might have – its bombing of ISIS is easy to understand.