Why do I keep wondering what if I had chosen differently?
A different city, a job you turned down, someone you never called back. At night the "what if" comes back and plays out the other life. It feels like the memory of a big decision. At the time, the choice may have seemed small.
Robert Frost wrote about this in "The Road Not Taken," published in Mountain Interval (1916).
Two roads, about the same
The poem is often read as praise of boldness. The middle stanza says something else. The traveler thinks one road is less worn, then corrects himself:
"Had worn them really about the same"
— Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken", Mountain Interval
That morning both paths lay under leaves no one had stepped on. He couldn't tell them apart. The choice was small.
The story comes later
The difference appears only in the last stanza, and it is in the future tense:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence"
He already knows how he will tell it. One day he will say he took the road less traveled and that it made all the difference. The fork gets its meaning later, in the telling.
Living your life again is covered here. This page is about a single fork.
What the poem leaves
Frost never says which road was better. He shows when the story about a choice gets made. That leaves a question: what story do you tell about your own choices, and when did you start telling it?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.