Frosty

I have a confession to make:  I always thought Robert Frost was a bit of a sentimental hack - a sort of grade eight training poet, if you will.  Lately, however, I find myself strangely drawn to him.  Maybe it's because I've become more sentimental myself.  Or perhaps you need a certain amount of life experience before his poetry can truly resonate.  At this moment in my life, I'm faced with some pretty tough decisions, and can't stop thinking about "The Road Not Taken".  The thought of the non-metaphorical road not taken in my own future scares me perhaps more than anything else in the world.  Take the line "I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence" - it's not so much the immediate consequences of the decisions I must make that get to me, but how I will look back on my choices in the future.  I want to be satisfied with my life "ages and ages hence", but know it's impossible to live without regrets.

Moreover, my new inner mantra seems to have become "miles to go before I sleep"; repeating it over and over in my head all day provides the sense of urgency required to triumph over the inertia of inaction that has ruled my life for the past two years.

My new favourite quote is also by Frost:  "happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length".  It's such a beautiful, melancholy thought - the kind of thing you don't recognize as being true before someone points it out.  It is, after all, the memories of good times that make bad times (or even boring, blah times) bearable.  And let's face it, most of us have more boring, blah, and bad times than good times.  Or maybe that's just the wrong attitude entirely...