To start this off, I wound up with The Dangerous Book for Boys
which is a lovely compendium of knowledge targeting young boys
(there is now a similar book for girls).The page I flipped to
was in a section called “7 poems every boy should know”, and the
poem I found on that page was Robert Frost’s famous The Road Not
Taken. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less
traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Interestingly, as often as the last three lines of this poem are
quoted, it is seldom in the intended context. Frost wrote this
piece about a friend who was in the army, and was deciding
between two roads in the field of battle, fully expecting
whichever choice he made would be the wrong one and lead to his
demise. If you think about that, it really changes the entire
meaning of those oft spoken words. Today’s connotative meaning
is usually the exact opposite of Frost’s intent for the passage.
When people use the phrase today, they are talking about how
they are “being their own pers