The road WELL traveled

In his 1978 best-seller book, “The road less traveled” Scott Peck uses a title that was a metaphor for choosing an unconventional life path, exploring themes of love, relationships, and spiritual growth through discipline, responsibility, truth, and balancing. 

The phrase itself stood for an independent, less-traveled choice that showed individuality, and was inspired by Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken". I read the book, but aside from the above, I don’t retain any special distinct point from it, and all I say today is that “a road less traveled” has a tinge of exclusivity in it, is certainly not intended for the masses, but for a rare elite who can afford it, both in terms of time and resources. 

In other words I neither had the time nor the money to drive my Citroën 2cv from my Alpine hometown to Kabul and back! In fact I just did the opposite and I traveled “well”, meaning “more deeply”, the paths that came my way or were sparingly offered to me. This gives the term “well traveled” a meaning for fullness, presence, and gratitude. It also shows that it’s not reserved for those with privilege, but available to anyone who commits to making the most of what’s found at hand. In Robert Frost’s situation there were two divergent roads to chose from and therefore it was about choice. 

My “road well traveled” is about response. I didn’t choose the rare path; I simply honored the paths I was offered. A subtle difference that it was less about defiance but more about stewardship. I simply can say that I didn’t leave any stone unturned at any moment of my life. I was thinking about that a few mornings ago, as I woke up. 

True, I used any strand of opportunity to make them bear fruits, never neglected a single one of them, but as a kid, having learned what scarcity was, I was determined to put every tiny little bit of help on my side. In the end, it has worked beautifully and continues to effectively act in my favor. Nothing too trivial or nothing too small. 

I just make sure to learn how to navigate the opportunities that were thrown to me as well as I could, before even thinking of embarking on the road less traveled. I could conclude by saying that the road well traveled is not about novelty, but about depth. It is the art of walking familiar paths with uncommon attention, of finding abundance in scarcity, and of proving that meaning lies not in the rarity of the road, but in the way we travel it.