Zen Pencils by Gavin Aung Than for June 08, 2015

Gotta love Frost

Gotta love Frost

So, no matter which road you take you still wind up old/dead.

Big deal.

@hawgowar: With that attitude you’re already dead and just haven’t laid down yet.

Love this! Whichever road you choose, it’s a good choice… if you choose to make the most of it.

awesome

Don’t forget the fork……matter of fact why is that fork in the road…..what does it signify.

Old saying.Life is a journey with the same destination……just remember its all about the journey.

Ya’ll do know, of course, that Frost wasn’t giving advice, merely reflecting on indecision. How could it be advice. If everyone follows advice to take “the road less traveled,” it becomes the road most traveled. One can never say which road is best, just as one can never regret taking one or the other, because, no matter how rough the one taken becomes, the one not taken might lead to something terrible indeed. The only real mistake is to fail to attend to every inch of which ever road is taken. .Would Frost look back and regret writing this poem or even choosing the road that led to poetry? After all, arguably it killed his friend. That, too, it a lesson from Frost. He didn’t take this poem to be serious work, but taking it seriously had profound consequences for someone else. Don’t take any of them too seriously. .(Just my luck that when I come to the fork in the road, I’ll run over it and get a flat tire.)

When the road comes to a fork;take ‘it’. :)

It was a fork. When you see a fork in the road, take it.

What can you say……you took the path so why sweat the one you did not take.You are where you are right now….that is all that matters.I had so many paths in my life, I don’t regret not taking one, I accept the one I took.Frost was saying he took the path less travelled. No one gets rich writing poetry. Artists are not usually famous until after they die. That is a path least travelled by most…..they take the safer one, get a job, follow the crowd, some take the other one but the point of the artist interpretation is we all reach the same end, rich or poor, famous or unknown, we all reach the same end.

I thought the last panels did a beautiful job of expressing some ambivalence. But Frost never said which road would make you happy, just that it would make a difference.

I like the fresh perspective on an old poem!

We are all constructing our own tapestry. When we look back, we can see the texture, the pattern, the warp and the woof as it were. Life is a series of indecisions that require decisions, even if it’s not to choose. As years calendar by, if we have any perspicacity, we can adjust the patterns in a way presumably positive for us. But no matter what we do, there will always be the existential reality of a life that could have been chosen. I met Mr. Frost in February of 1962 in the company of his friend, Margaret L. Coit who arranged the meeting. He seemed sour, bitter, disappointed. Some say dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders may seem that way, but I had the feeling that perhaps he was not satisfied with the road he had taken. Just my opinion.

Beautiful!!! One of my favorite poems from Robert Frost. :-)

One road however, is always looked back upon and wonderedWhat if……..I’ve always remembered this poem from the first time I’ve heard n read it in HS

Beautifully done! I know about the road not taken. I would have still been happy and loved but I don’t think I’d have done the things I have with the choice I made.

Back in school the teachers told me that this was a plea to take the path less travelled. But the statement “and sorry I could not travel both” stands out more to me. Seems that he wishes he could have experienced both paths along with their joys, triumphs, failures, pains, and the whole of life.

When I was young, I desired full life along every path. Now, I have made choices. In my desire for FULL life, THIS path has shown me that I need to LET GO. Let go of the “what ifs”, of the “traveling back”, of even some of the little “rabbit trails” criss-crossing THIS path. It is hard, so hard. But what I really desire is to make a difference for the better, to be happy. And in this path I have chosen, I am now (solely) responsible for two new little sets of feet, and I cannot help those first forays along THEIR path choices, if I am running blithely after my OWN paths..It is good.:-)

I, too, don’t like the illustations, though not for the reason you give. That’s often the case with Zen Pencils, where even when I like a quotation, I feel the interpretation suggested by the illustrations is too narrow and seems to push other interpretations into the background. I think the quotes are actually more powerful without the illustrations, as there’s then more — much more — room for interpretation..After all, if my life’s path has been different from Gavin’s, then the relevance of a quote to my life could be quite different from his interpretation.