When the Roads Diverge
Recognizing the Fork

ELIZABETH GEORGE
May 1, 2026

In Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” the speaker comes to a fork on his route through a woodland. It’s autumn, so the woods are yellow, and those leaves which have already fallen retain some of their color, having not been walked upon and blackened. The two roads—which actually seem to be paths and not what we today would consider a road—are nearly identical to the eye, their only distinguishing feature being a bend in one of them that makes it seem to disappear into the undergrowth. Other than that, there is nothing to suggest one path is better than the other. The choice is entirely up to the speaker who has paused to ponder which direction he should take. He decides upon the path that, in his words, is “the one less traveled by” although in truth and according to what he’s already told us, there is no real way to know if this is the case. He ends the poem by admitting that, no matter which of the two paths he chooses, he will probably claim at a later date that taking the “less traveled” path has made all the difference in his life. We don’t learn, however, what that putative difference is or might be, whether it is good, bad, interesting, frightening, harrowing, grief-producing, maddening, etc. Indeed, for me the fork in the road is itself the point, as is how we reflect upon the consequences of the choice we make when we come upon that fork.

These kinds of fork-in-the-road moments happen to all of us, but they don’t always announce themselves as forks about which we have a choice. Instead, they often look like major disappointments or crushing losses or unexpected revelations or unwanted developments in our lives that bring with them the burden of pain. These kinds of moments stop us in our tracks, just as—in Robert Frost’s poem—the speaker stops and examines the two routes available to him.

I sometimes think of this examination of routes as “reframing.” Let me explain: An event occurs in my life that is unexpected, unwanted, or hurtful. I ask myself if I can reframe that event in order to examine it from another angle. Reframing is, for me, a form of choosing to see an inconvenience or a disappointment as a possibility or—even better—an opportunity. It’s a way that I tell myself that X didn’t happen as I hoped it would, so what is Y? Or, I failed at X, so what is Y? This makes some of life’s challenges less of a disruption in my plans (or more often in my need to control everything around me!) and more of an indication that I could be overlooking something that’s quite close by and ready to be seen. It’s another way of using the old saw about God closing one door and opening another.

A fork in the road is bigger, though. It demands more of us. It asks that we first recognize we’re actually at a fork, and that can be an excruciating admission. If a husband or a wife or a lover tells an unsuspecting partner that their relationship is over after however-many-years of marriage or partnership, the unsuspecting partner is given something akin to a deathblow. That individual is, literally, stopped dead in his/her tracks. Absorbing the information makes it impossible in the moment to see anything but the devastation such an announcement has caused. This devastation erodes the ability to feel anything but the most intense passions. Getting through the emotional tornado without falling apart is critical. But so is having the ability to see that, once the initial terrible time has passed and the searing pain has diminished, there are choices to be made. There is, hence, a fork in the road.

We often hear about or read about people who are not able to recognize that fork. So often the result of not recognizing the fork is tragedy: a rejected lover becomes a stalker becomes a murderer; a former employee becomes a seeker of vengeance becomes a mass murderer; the loser of a lawsuit becomes an obsessive becomes an arsonist or a kidnapper or burglar or anything that will result in that loser feeling avenged; a young man thwarted in his every attempt to attract females becomes a misogynist becomes a drive-by shooter who targets college girls. Each individual in these examples has stood at a fork and has failed to realize that fact. This failure to realize that a fork in the road exists blinds them to any choice save the one that will bring them and others to grief.

I think, as Americans, we have reached the fork in the road of our country’s history. This fork is defined as the choice we must make about the nature and the future of the United States. For millions of people, considering the fork that offers more of exactly what we have at this precise moment is the route to the nation’s ultimate destruction as a republic. Thus, those people will not accept a course that allows the the GOP to remain in power. For them, the choice is simple. It is made quickly. But for millions of others, choosing a route that requires them to alter a lifetime of party affiliation simply immobilizes them. They will not talk about it, and they cannot think about it. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents all voted always for GOP candidates, and they will continue to do the same. Hence voting for anyone else would be more than anathema to them. It would be an abomination. And for still millions of others, choosing a route that demonstrates or even suggests the error of their previous choices is a move they will not face. None of these millions are politicians, mind you. Politicians are a breed apart, and a disturbing and disappointing number of them are governed solely by self-interest and self-promotion. We cannot expect leadership of them, especially among those who serve in office at this particular juncture.

I understand all of this because like so many lifelong Republican voters, I have only and always voted for Democrats. Yet I want to believe that, were I confronted by a Democrat President with the overt corruption, the base ignorance, the moral depravity, and the teeming resentments displayed by Donald Trump—in conjunction with the labyrinth of lies he has used to distract and confuse the American people—I would vote for the strongest candidate that could defeat him, no matter that candidate’s political affiliation.

Those of us who oppose Donald Trump and everything he stands for sometimes look at one another and say, “What will it take?” meaning “What does Trump have to do to make his followers turn from him?” The answer frequently is “They’ll never turn from him. It’s a cult. They are brainwashed.” And perhaps that’s the truth of the matter. Yet we all know that these individuals comprise a minority of the voting public, so we somehow have to convey to the rest of his supporters—his non-cult supporters—that they stand at a fork in the road of our nation’s history when the privilege of choosing the route to take has become the exigency of choosing the right route. Like all forks in the road, there are two choices. But it is my belief that only one of them possesses a consequence that all of us can embrace.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104