Standing At A Crossroads, Do We Take the Road Less Traveled By*?

It seems to me that as we continue to live through and, in fits and spurts, eventually emerge from this pandemic, we will look upon all the suffering that has been and will still be, and recognize that humanity now stands at the proverbial crossroads where two roads diverged in the woods and we need to decide, collectively, down which path we want to tread.

One path, the one conventionally perceived as the “easier” route, is the one that purports to move forward by going back to “normal.” This is the path favored by most elites, by many businesses, by client politicians and their corporate donor bases and, perhaps not surprisingly, it is the path back to where things were working out just fine for a small group of people sitting atop the Global economy, even as they weren’t working out for the many too tired to understand they’d been hoodwinked as they let inertia propel them down this path as well. This is the path back to short-term thinking and putting profits over people and the environment; the path back to pollution and ecological degradation on a massive scale; the path back to rising carbon emissions and a warming planet that puts all of its host species, flora and fauna, on a guaranteed trajectory towards extinction. In short, the path back to “business as usual.”

But there is another path, a “road less traveled,” that may seem like a more daunting road to take, one less certain in its outcome and one that only a few so far have had either the temerity or the luxury to contemplate embarking on. This is a path that moves forward, not one that doubles back on itself in a futile quest to recapture a time and a place that only ever worked out really well for a few of its travelers. This path forward asks its pilgrims to engage in a new way of thinking, one that realizes, perhaps only now after having finally witnessed in full technicolor the fundamental flaws and precariousness of that old, seemingly familiar path, that taking a different road is actually much less terrifying than retreating blindly back onto the old path of bad decision-making, the one that led us to this very point in time, now, and made our “normal” way of living untenable.

This forward-looking, “grassy path that wanted wear” is one where investments made today are not routed towards the failing enterprises of yesterday — failing morally, socially and environmentally — but rather directed towards the healthcare and basic needs of all persons, regardless of their social utility; the regenerative agricultural practices necessary to heal and feed a planet; and the reduced energy needs and infrastructure construction of a sustainable tomorrow, a tomorrow where humanity finally realizes it cannot constantly exploit every resource in the biosphere without serious consequences for its own survival.

So once one understands that the old, familiar road doesn’t lead back to some bygone, Rockwellian vision of America, but rather leads to something more akin to the false fronts and cardboard-cutouts of happy townspeople populating a missile test site, it is time to take the road less traveled by….

And that can make all the difference.

*Inspiration taken from Robert Frost’s immortal poem, “The Road Not Taken.”