U-vacharta Ba-chayim
In one of his most famous poems, Robert Frost imagines himself standing at a crossroads in a "yellow wood" and having to decide which path forward to choose. The poem turns on the fact that neither path clearly recommends itself as the "better" one to choose: both are covered in yellow autumnal leaves, one is "just as fair" as the other, and both lead to destinations that Frost cannot see.1 In just twenty lines, the poet thus suggests the plight of moderns who must make decisions in life that may eventually be perceived as matters of great importance, but that feel hardly even to matter much when they are actually being made. That is surely a challenge we all face, but how exactly to deal with it is challenging to say. It surely seems exaggerated to conclude from the poet's reverie that our decisions in life don't really matter at all simply because we cannot say at the outset where they may ultimately lead us—much less that they have no real importance because we will end up in the same place anyway. Those conclusions both feel just a bit irrational, but neither should we read the poem's famous conclusion—that the poet's decision to travel the path less taken has ended up making all the difference in his life—as suggesting that the wisest choices in life are invariably those spurned by the majority. Surely, for all the oylem may be a goylem, it can't always be unwise to make some specific decision in life merely because many others have previously chosen to make it! (The Yiddish aphorism, one of my own father's favorites, conveys the same message as the one attributed, possibly spuriously, to Alexander Hamilton according to which "the masses are asses.")
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U-vacharta Ba-chayim
In one of his most famous poems, Robert Frost imagines himself standing at a crossroads in a "yellow wood" and having to decide which path forward to choose. The poem turns on the fact that neither path clearly recommends itself as the "better" one to choose: both are covered in yellow autumnal leaves, one is "just as fair" as the other, and both lead to destinations that Frost cannot see.1 In just twenty lines, the poet thus suggests the plight of moderns who must make decisions in life that may eventually be perceived as matters of great importance, but that feel hardly even to matter much when they are actually being made. That is surely a challenge we all face, but how exactly to deal with it is challenging to say. It surely seems exaggerated to conclude from the poet's reverie that our decisions in life don't really matter at all simply because we cannot say at the outset where they may ultimately lead us—much less that they have no real importance because we will end up in the same place anyway. Those conclusions both feel just a bit irrational, but neither should we read the poem's famous conclusion—that the poet's decision to travel the path less taken has ended up making all the difference in his life—as suggesting that the wisest choices in life are invariably those spurned by the majority. Surely, for all the oylem may be a goylem, it can't always be unwise to make some specific decision in life merely because many others have previously chosen to make it! (The Yiddish aphorism, one of my own father's favorites, conveys the same message as the one attributed, possibly spuriously, to Alexander Hamilton according to which "the masses are asses.")
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U-vacharta Ba-chayim
U-vacharta Ba-chayim
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940161493045 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Paradigm Matrix |
| Publication date: | 12/03/2018 |
| Series: | Mesorah Matrix Series , #8 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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