A Road Less Traveled

I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost

My sister took her six year old to the polls so that she could be there when her mommy voted for Obama, my parents called as the results poured in because they needed to speak to their children as history rose up before their eyes, our friends stood and cheered in our living room as champagne poured and our breath was taken away and tears fell. The millions of similar and deeper moments around the country are not merely an election, they are an anthem.

Barack Obama is a brand new reflection for America to see itself and a new lens through which the world might see us. We look at him and we see ourselves and we quietly wish that when the rest of world looks at him, they see us with the same hopeful eyes.

Standing before those two roads we had a decision to make: an America we were or an America we can be. Again, Frost puts it best: "And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day. Yet knowing how way leads to way, I doubted if I should ever go back."

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Comments

[Auntmisbehaving]

I am wallowing in the beauty and seeming sanctity of our win, and you are so right, Michael, we want to be with all the people we love best in this old world right now, because we we instinctively know we're at a true crossroad. I find that I am tearing up at EVERYTHING last night and today; how wonderful to be an Obama supporter. Those poor old Republicans.,,they don't even understand, but then they never did get it, did they?

[JazzPuff]

Thank you for your article I liked it. And, I like that you used Robert Frost, a man, I believe of simple words and ideals that meant so much more, as did Carl Sandburg, whom I use in my own profile: "Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by." I feel those words could have been used last night or today or the next four years. I hope that everyone can find the strength in these poets simple thoughts and words that still give meaning to us at times when we feel we have very little left... Powerful words when you think about them, I think Obama"s speech was powerful and a joy that I will remember.

[chucklasker]

Poignant. Thanks for your posts throughout this campaign. We are a better country for them.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

Thank you again, Michael. Your comments here, throughout, have been the most incisive I've read. It means so much to have a fellow American put to words, so eloquently as you have, what I, and I'm sure many others, feel.

Yes. We. Can.

[Claude203]

I never thought that poem by Robert Frost would bring tears to my eyes. But it did.