“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both…” The first line of Robert Frost’s famous poem encapsulates my recent, unusual July 4th holiday, attending a week-long personal growth retreat in a small Connecticut town. Sitting in the classroom with anticipation on the first day, facilitators introduced the process of deep inner exploration we were embarking upon through a metaphor. They described life as a series of decision points where we choose one of two roads with vastly different outcomes. On the left road are the habitual ways of thinking and behaving that keep us stuck, feeling unfulfilled, and disconnected from our authentic selves. It’s a road that circles back on itself repeatedly, limiting possibilities for expansion. The right road represents coherence among our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual selves, where we act from a place of conscious choice. This road curves upward and outward with no end, leading to an inspired vision of the future where everything is possible. For many of us, the right road is the road less traveled…less certain. And, without a doubt, it’s the one that led me and the 28 other expectant souls to the room that day.
Later in the week, I found myself walking with a fellow classmate on a literal road around the idyllic retreat center as we dissected an earlier exchange between us. A few hours prior, having already spent multiple days rebooting our old operating systems, we tested our understanding of “negative transference.” We’d recently learned about this practice, which all humans carry out unconsciously hundreds of times per day: a reaction ranging from a quiet judgment to a compulsive outburst when we are triggered by someone else’s appearance or actions. We assume we’re responding to that person, but if we look deeper, we’re actually projecting our adaptive childhood beliefs and behaviors onto them. While this happens with perfect strangers, it rears its ugly head most often and distorts relationships with the people we are closest to. In the spirit of learning more about our own destructive patterns in the context and container of this retreat, we were asked to reflect on negative transference experiences with our classmates, people who had been strangers just days before. The next assignment was to approach someone we had identified and directly share how they triggered us, describing our negative perceptions and judgments.
I immediately recoiled at this exercise, expecting it to feel horribly awkward, and it did not disappoint. A woman I barely knew told me she perceived me as the kind of superior “it girl” you’d imagine personified in any number of middle and high-school dramas who ignores girls like her. While she took full responsibility for why and how she generated these feelings without even knowing me, I was horrified. Not only was that the opposite of how I intended to present, but it immediately regressed me emotionally to my experience in middle school, where I was the one comparing myself to the “it girls,” feeling worthless and invisible. I recalled how I begged my mother to help me fit in by buying the right shoes, styling my hair similarly, and wearing makeup to appear more mature (which, much to my dismay, she rejected). I believed that if I could mold myself into one of them – the popular girls – just maybe, I’d fill that hole inside. Practicing recognizing my own transference and being on the receiving end of someone else’s offered me not just a time capsule but a mirror. I realized that not only do I still carry a narrative of the insecure pre-teen somewhere in my psyche, but feeling insignificant is a fear that perhaps all humans share in some capacity. Here I was, almost 30 years after my first recollection of that feeling, being told by another adult woman that I represented those “other” women for her. Her perception highlighted how much I’d been distorting my relationship with myself, wearing innumerable masks in order to feel worthy and lovable. She inadvertently exposed my own shame story by vulnerably sharing hers.
While I missed the traditional Independence Day fireworks display as I volunteered for this uncomfortable journey of self-discovery, I gained something deeper: a celebration of newfound personal independence from my unconscious circling on the left road. The week offered a new awareness of how I continue to live a false narrative and the possibility of taking a different path. It also highlighted a collective humanity and the unity that is possible when we can safely express our fears. The left road is easier, I suppose – there, I don’t have to take responsibility. It tethers me to my familiar identity, even if it’s one that keeps me playing small. The right road requires the discomfort of feeling tough emotions and owning 100% of my contribution to relationships – most importantly, the one with myself. As I talked with my new friend, examining our respective experiences of delivering and receiving critical feedback, I realized we were walking on an actual road that kept looping back around to the same starting point. And that’s exactly where I’ll be in life if I continue to go left, returning to the same place of limitation. As Tony Robbins said, “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” We all have a choice. Mine is not always going to be the right one, but I intend to clear the brush from that road less traveled, the one leading to ultimate freedom.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
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 on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
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
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