The road less traveled is the winning route
My eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Greenspan, had our class memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” I did not appreciate poetry very much in grade school, but somehow that poem stayed with me.
Frost describes a traveler standing at a fork in the woods, wishing he could walk down both paths at once, knowing he can only see so far before the road bends out of view. “I took the one less traveled by,” he writes, “and that has made all the difference.”
It is a simple image, but it captures something true about nearly every meaningful decision we make in life, from whom we marry, to what we do for a living, to the countless daily choices that shape the people we become.
The poem is strikingly similar to a beautiful mashal brought by the Daas Zekeinim MiBaalei HaTosfos on last week’s parshah, Re’eh. The Torah tells us, “Re’eh, Anochi nosein lifneichem hayom berachah u’kelalah” (Devarim 11:26), “See, I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse.”
The Daas Zekeinim describe an elderly man sitting at a crossroads when a young traveler approaches. Before him are two roads. One begins smooth, wide, and inviting, but after a short distance it becomes filled with thorns and difficult to travel. The other begins with thorns and rocks, but soon opens into a beautiful, smooth road.
The old man has already walked both paths. He knows what the traveler cannot yet see. He tells him not to be fooled by the easy beginning. Choose the harder road now, because it leads somewhere better. In many ways, it is the Torah’s version of taking the road less traveled.
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This is exactly the choice Hashem places before us through Torah and mitzvos. The beginning is rarely easy. Self-discipline rarely is.
Whether it is getting up early to learn, holding back a word of lashon harah, doing chesed when you do not feel you have the bandwidth, or changing a habit we have had for years, the first steps can feel like walking through thorns. But Hashem, so to speak, is the wise old man sitting at the crossroads. We only see the beginning of the road. He sees where it ends. He knows that if we are willing to push through the difficult beginning, the road eventually becomes one of blessing.
That lesson is especially relevant as we prepare for Elul. I have been trying to work on my nutrition as one form of teshuvah, together with the more obvious areas I want to improve, like my speech and my middos.
The Gemara (Berachos 32b) cites the pasuk, “Venishmartem me’od lenafshoseichem” (Devarim 4:15), “Take utmost care and guard yourself diligently,” as the basis for guarding our health. G-d wants us to take care of the bodies He entrusted to us.
I have been trying to stop eating impulsively and to become more conscious of why I am reaching for food in the first place. I will be honest. The beginning has been hard. The cravings for sugar are strong, and habits that have been built over years do not disappear overnight. But slowly something changes. After three weeks or so, at least for me, the cravings become quieter.
The body adjusts. You have more energy. What originally felt restrictive starts to feel freeing. It made me realize that teshuvah often works the same way. The hardest part is usually the beginning.
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The Ramban famously asks why Hashem tested Avraham at the Akeidah if He already knew what Avraham would do (Ramban to Bereishis 22:1). His answer is that a nisayon is never for Hashem. It is for us. In the Ramban’s words, its purpose is “lehotzi hadavar min hakoach el hapo’al,” to bring what exists in potential into reality. As long as greatness remains only potential, a person never truly knows what he or she is capable of. A nisayon transforms hidden strength into lived reality.
I once heard a beautiful illustration of this idea. If you are sitting while reading this, hold your hands out in front of you. You probably do not feel very much. Now place your hands underneath your chair and gently pull upward. Immediately you feel resistance, and suddenly you become aware of muscles that you hardly noticed a moment earlier.
The strength was always there. The resistance simply revealed it.
This is exactly what the Ramban means. Hashem does not send us nisyonos (spiritual challenges) because He needs to know who we are. He sends them because we need to discover who we are.
That is why teshuvah is never supposed to feel effortless. Real change always begins with a little resistance. Choose one area that needs work and make the goal small enough that you can actually keep it.
Five minutes without speaking lashon harah every Tuesday from 12:00 until 12:05. Putting away your phone in another room while davening. Make the goals small, and then you can gradually increase them. The road may begin with a few thorns, but Hashem has already told us where it leads.
In the end, like the traveler in the poem, we will look back and know it was the road less traveled that made all the difference.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
