The Road Less Travelled vs. the HOV Lane

I keep looking at the title of my blog and thinking about the concept of the road.  According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, the word "road" comes from the old English for "ride" or "journey."  We take this word for granted in our lives, thinking of it in two distinct ways: one is the physical path that we use to travel from one place to another, the other is the metaphorical path that we use to travel through life's circumstances, each decision being equivalent to coming to a crossroads and choosing which way to go. 

Of course everyone knows clearly that the word "road" can be interpreted in these two ways.  The thing that interests me today is how these roads have evolved and the relationship between the physical and the symbolical roads in our lives.  Think of physical roads and our methods of transporting ourselves on them.  Can you imagine sitting in a carriage drawn by horses for a long journey?

As recently as 1910, a stagecoach would only travel fifteen miles per hour (see footnote if interested).  At that speed, it would take almost six and a half hours to travel from Philadelphia to New York.  And these were the days before cell phones and the Internet, not to mention that the ride was probably too uncomfortable to sleep through.  Think about what it would be like to travel even farther?  The point is, people used to have time to look out and observe the road they were on and think.  If you were travelling after a storm maybe a tree would have fallen across the road, forcing you to go around a different way.  Plans were a little more fluid to account for the unpredictability of the journey. 

Railroads, automobiles, highways, and airplanes quickly followed and changed the concept of travel altogether.  Now you go from point A to point B as quickly as possible on a cemented highway that might even have walls on each side.  The walls are meant to block the road noise from nearby communities, but they also block your view of the places that you travel through.  If you catch a flight it’s even faster, but then you completely eliminate the option of stopping along the way or taking a different route and, as I have observed on my flights, you are probably too absorbed by your computer to look out through the window or stop, relax, and spend some time with yourself, reflecting. 

Now think about how a person’s personal journey through life might take shape.  In the early 1900’s one might not have had many options in life.  The farther back in history you look, the fewer options people had.  If you were born to a merchant you would take over the family business an increase (or at least maintain) your family’s wealth.  If you were born to a miner you would probably not be educated and would go to work in the mine, maybe even while you were still a very young child.  If you were a woman, forget it, your options were even fewer.  Fast forward to 2011.  Regardless of what your parents do for a living, you can do whatever you want to do in life.  This has been drilled into us since we were kids.  We know that we can go to college and choose our field of study, go for advanced degrees, and forge our path in life. 

The million dollar question is: What is my path in life?  In this society of highways we are so goal oriented that we miss seeing the smaller paths.  We see the big highways of law, business, education, and other fields.  Don’t get me wrong, these are great paths for some people to take, the people whose passion it is to work in them.  However, in a world full of diversity, the “profession pool,” as I like to call it, should reflect this diversity.  Maybe the path that will be the most rewarding for you or for me will be a smaller path, one that is less noticeable to the public eye and that feels, in some ways, like it was custom-fitted.  I think we need to take some time to disconnect from media highways and go explore some smaller roads and reflect on what moves us individually. 

I’ll leave you with a poem by Robert Frost that I think captures the essence of what I am trying to convey:

The Road Not Taken (1915)

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.

1 Indispensable Railroads in a Backward Economy: The Case of Mexico
John H. Coatsworth
The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 39, No. 4. (Dec., 1979), pp. 945.
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http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28197912%2939%3A4%3C939%3AIRIABE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O