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 first 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.
Robert Frost 1920
I think this is the first time I read the poem from beginning to end. It is woeudrfnl. Thank you, Wendy! (BTW, I am catching up on you older readathon posts; the ones I didn’t get to read or comment on while I was cheerleading; I will definitely be a reader next time as well).
John wrote: In other words, believing in free will and believing in the laws of cause and effect is not an either-or choice.Define “free will”. Either your thoughts follow the laws of physics, or they don’t. If they do, as I think they do, then your thoughts are ultimately controlled by the universe, unless you think you can mentally control the laws of physics. So your definition of “free will” will have to be a form of “determined free will” (quantum indeterminism won’t help here, since our minds don’t control it). And that’s fine (see, for example, McCarthy’s ).