„Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.“

From „The Road Not Taken“ by Robert Frost (American Poet and Pulitzer award winner, 1874 – 1963)

A few weeks ago, I was sitting with a friend at dinner, and we began talking about the different paths our lives had taken. Although we had both studied chemistry and he is still very active in that field, my passion today lies in working with people – as a meditation teacher and a companion on the path to spiritual and psychological maturation.

He laughed about how unexpectedly I had moved in this direction and quoted the well-known line from Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken. Although this poem is very famous, many people only know the short excerpt from the last stanza, shown above. And indeed, this passage is often used to explain why someone supposedly became successful:

“I took the way less traveled by. I did something no one else did. And that made me successful.”

But interestingly, this is not what Robert Frost intended to express with his poem. One simply needs to read the other stanzas.

The poem is about life decisions. The two roads in the woods symbolize alternatives in life: career, relationships, life choices – every time, one must choose one path and cannot walk the other.

However, the central emotion that accompanies such decisions is ambivalence, not heroism or particularly fearless determination, as the famous excerpt often suggests.

In the earlier stanzas, the speaker stands there for a long time, unable to decide which path to take. The paths hardly differ! Frost explicitly writes that both roads are nearly identical:
both “equally worn,” both “equally covered in untrodden leaves.”

The idea that the speaker boldly chose the less traveled path is a misunderstanding – one that Frost intentionally creates with irony.

The fourth stanza reads:

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.

The speaker imagines himself later – with a sigh – reinterpreting the past to make it seem more meaningful.

It is a commentary on our human tendency to invent heroic stories in hindsight, making decisions appear clearer or more courageous than they truly were.

The real message of the poem is:
We often must choose between options that are nearly the same, and only in retrospect do we tell ourselves stories about how “brave” or “fateful” our choice must have been. The meaning is created afterwards – not necessarily by the choice itself.

The Advaita Vedanta Perspective

The poem is a beautiful example of what Advaita Vedanta teaches through non-dualism:
The two paths represent alternatives in life.

But Advaita asks:
Who is the “I” that believes it is choosing?

• Who perceives the paths?
• Who stands there suffering because they cannot walk both?

The observer in the poem is the separate ego-self, which presumes it exists in a world of alternatives.

This separation is Mara (you may remember the friendly demon holding the wheel of life) – a play of appearances. The ego experiences lack and projects the feeling of missed possibilities.

The thought “I could have lived differently” is the basic vibration of duality.

In pure awareness, however, there are neither alternatives nor missing out. Both paths are “essentially the same.” All appearances are made of the same substance – consciousness.

The ego-mind, on the other hand, adds meaning, importance, and a sense of authorship.

The poem’s speaker actually knows both paths were the same, yet later he will turn it into a heroic story.

Exactly this is what our ego-mind does:

• It creates a narrative identity.
• It attributes meaning to itself.
• It claims authorship over what has unfolded anyway.

The famous line “...and that has made all the difference” is almost humorous from an Advaita viewpoint.

The ego says:
• “My choice defines me.”
• “My path makes me who I am.”

Advaita says:
The difference exists only in the narrative mind – not in the Self.

In the true Self, in awareness:

• there is no past,
• no possible “other path,”
• no story that needs to be told.

Everything that happens is an expression of the same consciousness.

Shakespeare and Practice

To live more happily, we do not need to achieve complete self-realization first. It is enough to practice what Frost expresses poetically and Shakespeare states so concisely:

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

The meditative practice is to separate the mind’s story from the actual situation.

The Now is all that exists. Our entire life unfolds in and as this Now.

When we are mindful, we notice: Unhappiness does not arise from the situation itself – but from our thoughts about the situation.

So notice your thoughts. Smile when you see that you are telling yourself how difficult your life is – perhaps because you are struggling with a decision. Let the thought go. What remains is the pure Now – and that is much happier.

And smile as well when you notice yourself thinking that your life turned out wonderfully because you “took the less traveled path.” Then recognize the story the ego writes in hindsight.

By the way, I smiled and said nothing when my friend suggested that I had chosen an extraordinary path.

For everything is a form of consciousness – always new, colorful, and diverse.

We are all invited to discover our true Self in this life.

I am truly grateful to be part of your lives.

I wish you a wonderful Advent season and a peaceful Christmas – with plenty of meditative time to observe your thoughts and experience your true Self.



With love,

Heiko

"The Road Not Taken“ 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—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.