Page 12 - index

Still GoinG Down O A RoAD leSS tRAveleD
ne supposes there are many pivots of decision in the life for that the passing there had worn them really about the same.”
of a country, in the life of a business, in the life of an Today, the poem is often read with a romantic notion. e Robin individual. I remember sitting with Ken Whitacre, both Williams character in Dead Poets Society gathers his students and asks in our early 20s, when we made the decision to launch three to walk around. He quickly shows that their individual strides are Produce Business magazine back in 1985. abandoned and settle into a conforming gait. e teacher passionately
When assessing one’s own life, one wonders how things might have tells the children the nal lines of the poem: Two roads diverged in a wood, gone had that pivot turned the other way ... and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the di erence. Yet the idea that one can somehow imagine an alternative path and He reads it as a paean to individuality. It is Frost who hears oreau’s
know where it would have taken you is impossible to do. And, indeed, “di erent drummer.”
in life we are always compelled forward, with one thing leading to another thing, etc. Robert Frost re ected on this in his famous poem, “ e Road Not Taken,” which we’ve printed here.
e poem can be read semi-fatalistically: You make a choice and take a journey; one decision can transform a life — “I doubted if I should ever come back.”
e poem also can be read as enormously empowering. After all, we reach pivot points of decisions
every day in our lives. Every day,
you wake up and decide whether
Yet perhaps the most important lines are the ones that lead o that nal stanza and complete it:
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 di erence.
you are going to eat right and exercise, or not. Am I going to launch a new business, read a new book, write a new book, fall in love, mentor a younger person, invest in a friendship, be courageous or cowardly, kind or indi erent, generous or miserly?
Indeed, the poem itself speaks of renewal. e opening is in a “yellow wood” — in New England yellow leaves are from birch or alder trees. But these species are known as pioneer species, because they grow rst when a forest has been leveled by a re or logging. Mature forests are lled with maple trees, whose leaves are red. So even while he writes of de nitive choices, he also points out that things can begin again.
ere was really no basis for choosing one path or the other. e strongest claim made is that one path had “perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear;” though even that is quickly dismissed: “though as
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN BY ROBERT FROST
For perhaps the choice of roads is random, and the choice we make is infused with meaning by the narrative we create for it after the fact.
Robert Frost later pointed out that of this poem: “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.” Perhaps the trick is that we know nothing about whether the di erence was for the better or for the worse, and for the most part, choices are not determinative.
When Ken and I summoned this magazine from our dreams, we did not know there would be websites or that we would run international events or publish in Spanish and Chinese. We took a path, and we made of it what we could.
To lament paths not taken is silly. All one can do is enhance the paths that appear before us. So today, on the 33rd Anniver- sary of the launch of Produce Business, we pledge to do just that. pb
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 rst 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.
12 / OCTOBER 2018 / PRODUCE BUSINESS
Special Note
from jim prevor