Words I Carry With Me

This post is a recollection of some poetry and metaphors from movies/songs that I think about from time to time. Definitely not my typical post. I write it down thinking I might add to it over time, but even if don’t, I enjoyed reminiscing.

Robert Frost

I discovered Robert Frost in high school via the occasional English assignment of analyzing a small piece of literature. I can’t remember what grade I first read Robert Frost’s two most famous works “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” but I think of them as my life reaches some form of mid-halfway.

To me the conclusion of “The Road Not Taken” reflects on the road that diverges in the woods and the choice of one path over another. As I reflect on some of my own life decisions, I realize that at the moment of deciding there is only so far imagination can carry you down one path or the other. I live today the culmination of countless decisions large and small driving me forward. Sigh not and embrace the future.

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.

The other Frost poem I greatly enjoy is “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I grew up in Texas, no snow, and something about the visual image of being alone in the quiet of the snow really appealed to me—and the promises to keep to myself, the promises to move forward before I sleep.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The lesson I take is that in approaching life, minimize regrets1.

Rosebud

In high school, my grandmother shared her love of movies with me by taking me to Paramount Theatre and by watching old films on Turner Classic Movies2. One of those classic movies was Citizen Kane. I didn’t know it was considered a classic when I watched it. The movie starts with those in Kane’s circle wondering what his final word, “rosebud,” meant. None would guess that it was his childhood symbolized by a sled.

I think about what my “rosebud” is—what are the things I hold dear and cherish? American culture especially seems to hype up the new car, the bigger house, the high-status job. Of course my children are my greatest project, but I see that as a temporal assignment, albeit a long one. What are my personal creations and experiences that I hold dear? This site is in its own way a rosebud, from the very first post in 20103 to the itch to write something every night. In a lot of ways, it feels illogical how much fun I have doing this even to an audience of 1.4

The reflection for me is: In a world of consumption, what am I creating?

“Vienna” by Billy Joel

But you know that when the truth is told That you can get what you want or you can just get old You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, ooh When will you realize? Vienna waits for you

There are a lot of great songs that fit with the motif of “words that I carry,” but this one really captures a belief I picked up early in high school.5 There are a few decisions that have an outsized impact on your life; decisions that either take years to make or years to undo. Where you’re born in life is decided for you, but in early adulthood, you make decisions like where to live, what to study, marriage, kids, careers. The span of five short years brings an impossible list of things to figure out. The good news is that nothing is permanent and you can get what you want or you can just get old.

Warren Buffet has a famous speech he gives about only having “20 investments” to make. With the constraints of time and focus, making really good decisions in those investments will deliver the best outcome for one’s self.

Time will pass, age will come. But what will you make of it?

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt has been attributed amazing quotes and was a prolific writer6 of his time. When I think to myself the risks of self-publication and the critic, I think of Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic”.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Significant Revisions

  • Dec 9th, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 937E118A-95F1-4388-BDE5-1098335E51FD
  • Nov 24th, 2024 Draft created

Footnotes

  1. There is ample written research on decision bias and decision-making. I think Bezos probably made this most famous with his “regret minimization framework,” but I remember reading about the regrets of the dying, and the consensus on being true to oneself. ↩

  2. RIP Robert Osborne, who was just as much a part of my childhood as Bob Barker was. ↩

  3. My first GeoCities site is long lost to time. I can count a few more pre-internet publications: a poem in a school magazine, student photography in the school newspaper/yearbook. ↩

  4. On my original WordPress site, I think my site visits numbered in the dozens per week. My greatest joy was getting the comment “Hey, this helped me.” I decided against stats and comments with this current site as I just don’t care. I hope it’s valuable, but the joy is in the writing.

    Originally, I was just going to send this post to _archive as a personal thought that I would reflect on in the future, but to really commit to the self-publishing bit, my love of reading has to be here. I see this as breaking the ice for future posts on media I enjoy; if txcowboycoder.com was engineering-focused, then this site is whole-person-focused. ↩

  5. I think there is some real introspection needed to figure out why these beliefs came to be. Was it my grandfather? My childhood? Personal trauma? Books? Internet? Here we are, just like Inside Out 2, building core beliefs one memory at a time. ↩

  6. I mean who sits down and bangs out The Naval War of 1812 at age 23? See also my review on River of Doubt ↩