The Truth About the Road Less Traveled

I recently took the road less traveled…

…and ended up getting lost and collecting hundreds of pesky stickers in my clothes and socks.

I was on my regular run the other day, exploring a few streets I hadn’t been on. I passed a heavily wooded area and noticed a faint trail disappearing into the underbrush.

In the mood for adventure, I headed down the path, not sure where it would lead to.

A half hour later, I finally emerged onto a street that I recognized, my lower half adorned in a thick layer of tenacious stickers, and thinking of how my experience was a fitting analogy for other life pursuits.

As romantic as Robert Frost makes it sound, taking the road less traveled is never easy.

It’s far easier to go along with the crowd and never make waves than it is to take a stand, go against the grain of popular culture, and make a lasting difference.

Martin Luther King, Jr. took the road less traveled and was murdered for it, as was Gandhi. George Washington, wanting nothing more than to be a quiet farmer, suffered through years of toil and hardship as a General, then stayed in the trenches during two terms as President.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for attempting to free France from the rule of England and claiming that she saw visions. Corrie ten Boom endured the horrors of Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews. Jesus Christ was crucified for speaking truth.

The people who rock the status quo boat are usually kicked off the boat and are often drowned. But because of their courage and sacrifice, the rest of us enjoy smooth sailing.

We can complain today about slow traffic lights, while sitting in our air-conditioned cars listening to the radio and talking on our cell phones, because of the thousands of soldiers who suffered and died of frostbite, starvation, and disease at Valley Forge.

Is the road less traveled romantic and easy? No.

Inspiring and worth it? Yes. Will it make a difference? Absolutely.

“That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.” -Thomas Paine

The Road Less Traveled in an Age of Comfort

Ironically, in America today most are far less likely to take the road less traveled, not because it is more difficult than it was in the past, but precisely because it’s easier.

Accustomed to comfort, material abundance, and political freedom we often fail to see how simple it is, yet also how critically important.

We won’t be burned at the stake for speaking our mind, so few of us put anything into our minds worth speaking.

We’re not engaged in a bloody war with the political establishment, so we become soft and fail to fight the good, peaceful fight of striving for virtue and obtaining a world-class education.

We’re not faced with concentration camps, yet we often build ourselves personal prisons of complacence and selfishness.

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” -Gandhi

Our enemies and hardships are not murderous tyrants, starvation, disease, filth and poverty, and violent discrimination.

Instead, they are ease and comfort leading to apathy, ignorance because we’ve delegated our political responsibilities, greed from valuing our privileges above our principles, and societal decay from failing to care for the institution of family.

How To Find the Path and Make a Difference

We can and we must take the road less traveled for the benefit of our nation and our posterity.

Yet how we do that today, in an age of comfort and relative freedom, takes on a different, less grueling form than one might think.

Our Valley Forge consists of, among others, reading and discussing classics; being politically active; choosing to not to consume inappropriate media, no matter how popular or even if no one else will know; studying the Constitution, no matter how difficult it may be to understand; choosing to follow our dreams by becoming entrepreneurs, rather than selling out to false security and corporate benefits; and maintaining strong marriages and raising productive, self-reliant children.

Relative to being tortured, burned at the stake, dying of starvation, and being martyred, these seem easy, yet that is exactly why so few will actually do them.

But those who do will leave a legacy. They are those who will save the Constitution and preserve freedom for future generations. They are those who will discover more efficient and powerful methods of alleviating suffering in the world.

Be among them. Choose to take the road less traveled.

This road, while excruciating for heroes and heroines in the past and simple for us today, is never easy.

The easy, well-worn path is watching TV instead of reading Democracy in America.

Easy is abdicating to the government your responsibility to make sure your children are educated.

The popular path is to constantly eat unhealthy food and rarely exercise, then expect doctors and pills to take care of your health problems.

Easy is staying in a job with benefits that you dislike, rather than risking change in order to find a career path more conducive to living your passions.

Easy is seeing problems in society and waiting for the government to solve them, rather than rolling up your sleeves and going to work.

The hard and unpopular path isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Take the road less traveled — you might get lost for a time and you might attract stickers and experience other trials, but enduring hardship is the price of greatness.

As Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Recommended Reading:

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Becoming One Who Goes Before by Stephen Palmer

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Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.

He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela.

Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.