Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 107 - The Doors
Welcome to Issue 107 of Deep Life Reflections, where each week I share my thoughts on what I’m enjoying and thinking about.
This week we get a little philosophical, exploring how much of our lives we truly choose, and how much we simply believe we’ve chosen after the fact. Our guides are two very different works: Robert Frost’s beloved poem The Road Not Taken, re-examined by poetry critic David Orr, and The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s Oscar-nominated epic about power, architecture, immigration, and the slow erosion of agency. Together, they raise difficult questions about freedom, control, and the stories we tell to make sense of where we’ve ended up.
Join me as we explore this week’s Friday Five.
1. What I’m Reading
The Most Misread Poem in America. By David Orr in The Paris Review.
“I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
These are two of the most quoted lines in American poetry—widely understood as an ode to individuality and nonconformity.
Most people know they come from Robert Frost’s 1916 poem The Road Not Taken. And almost everyone interprets them the same way: as a celebration of bold, personal choice: the importance of following our own path in life.
But we might all be wrong.
Frost himself once warned of the poem, “You have to be careful with that one; it’s a tricky poem—very tricky.”
In 2015, David Orr, poetry critic for the New York Times Book Review, published a short book arguing that The Road Not Taken is the most misunderstood poem in America. As he puts it, “Almost everyone gets it wrong.”
Before examining his argument, it’s worth acknowledging just how deeply this poem has seeped into not just American culture, but global culture. It’s been quoted in Super Bowl ads, borrowed as the title of hundreds of books, and referenced in thousands of articles and television shows. On a word-for-word basis, it may be the most popular piece of literature ever written by an American.
And yet, Orr writes in The Paris Review:
“Most readers consider The Road Not Taken to be a paean to triumphant self-assertion, (“I took the one less travelled by”) but the literal meaning of the poem’s own lines seems completely at odds with this interpretation.”
The speaker claims he took the “less travelled” road, but earlier admits that both roads “equally lay / In leaves,” and that “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” He’s saying the two roads are indistinguishable. The choice is essentially an illusion.
Orr doesn’t read the poem as a tribute to can-do individualism, but as a critique of how we mythologise our lives. That our decision made “all the difference” is not a fact—it’s a story we tell ourselves. A comforting fiction. A way of telling ourselves that where we ended up was the result of deliberate choice, rather than accident or chance. And that opens the door to something far more unsettling: the philosophical powder keg of free will.
Frost originally wrote the poem as a playful poke at his friend Edward Thomas, who was famously indecisive during their walks together. Thomas would often regret the path they’d chosen—even while they were still on it. Whichever way they went, he felt they would miss something better on the other path.
Frost’s biographer, Lawrence Thompson, suggests the poem’s narrator is someone who consistently expends energy second-guessing—regretting their choices and wistfully sighing over the appealing alternatives they declined. (Surely, a feeling most of us know.)
Orr doesn’t claim his reading is the correct or definitive one. He acknowledges that poems by nature are meant to be interpreted rather than proven. And that any interpretation invites a range of possibilities. But he does argue that two things are certain:
The poem is not a straightforward and sentimental celebration of individuality.
Nor is the poem a knowing literary prank that has somehow fooled millions for over a century.
It’s something subtler: a poem about the idea of choice that somehow avoids making one. It both is and isn’t about individualism—a reflection on how we explain our decisions long after we make them. Or perhaps we never really made them at all.
Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once described the “paralysis of choice”—the dread that comes not from having no options, but too many. When countless paths are open, commitment becomes impossible.
Just like the speaker in Frost’s poem.
At the edge of the woods.
Two leaf-shadowed roads.
Equally worn.
Equally chosen or unchosen.
2. What I’m Watching
The Brutalist. 2024. Directed by Brady Corbet.
“The Brutalist feels like a miracle… It’s a film that turns inward into itself, winding its themes around its characters like a great American novel.” – Brian Tallerico, film critic.
I’ve been working my way through the films nominated for the 2025 Academy Awards—an annual ritual. Last weekend, I watched The Brutalist, which was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture, and won three, including Best Actor for Adrien Brody. It is a monumental performance and film.
Brody plays László Tóth, a visionary Hungarian architect who flees post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild his legacy in the United States. Tóth is a master of Brutalism—a stark, polarising architectural style built on raw concrete, exposed structure, and minimalist intent. Nothing is hidden. Nothing unnecessary.
The same can’t be said of his life.
Shortly after arriving, Tóth comes into the orbit of Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce), a wealthy businessman and self-styled patron of the arts. What begins as an invitation becomes a kind of silent entrapment. Van Buren commissions Tóth to design a new community space in rural Pennsylvania—encompassing a library, a theatre, a gymnasium, and a chapel. But the structure becomes something darker—a monument to control and ownership. But subtly. Cleanly.
The film is sweeping in scope—architecture, immigration, addiction, capitalism, class, art, violence. However, it’s fundamentally a film about post-war America. How immigrants helped remake America in their image—and how America reshaped them in return. Some, like Tóth, became entombed in what they hoped would set them free.
Disorientation is a constant theme. And we experience this too—a number of times the film withholds subtitles for long stretches of non-English dialogue. We’re just as in the dark.
The Brutalist opens with a striking image—Tóth emerges from a cramped, dark interior into daylight, his face lit with joy as he lays eyes on the Statue of Liberty. But director Brady Corbet twists the moment by presenting the iconic symbol upside down, floating at the top of the frame. A symbolic warping of the American Dream.
The opening also includes a quote from Goethe:
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.”
When Tóth’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, also Oscar-nominated) arrives—wheelchair-bound and emotionally scarred—he falls further into Van Buren’s debt and deeper into his architectural prison.
Despite the 3 hour and 36-minute runtime, complete with intermission, the story holds you from the first to last scene. The performances are superb, and so is the look and feel. The cinematography—shot on 70mm film stock—gives the film a haunting and strange look—including its odd, skewed opening credits—like something from a long-forgotten past.
The film’s closing line comes from Tóth’s niece, reflecting on her uncle’s life and work:
“No matter what others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”
Which brings us back to Frost.
The American myth says we’re free to choose.
Frost’s poem lets us believe we did choose.
But what if the roads were the same all along?
I think that’s what The Brutalist is asking.
3. What I’m Contemplating
The two works this week raise a difficult question:
How much of your life have you actually chosen—and how much have you narrated as choice after the fact?
I’ve been thinking about that lately.
This week marked 13 years since I moved to Dubai. Later this year, I’ll move to Spain, closing one chapter and opening another. Recently, I realised that I’ve been living in 13-year cycles.
At 23, I moved to Glasgow to start my career. At 36, to Dubai for something new. At 49, to Spain for nature, culture, and whatever comes next.
Each of these moves felt deliberate. There was a purpose behind them, and I could explain the reasons—opportunity, curiosity, lifestyle. But part of me now wonders: Was I choosing freely? Or was I following the rhythm of something I hadn’t yet noticed?
That’s the uncomfortable terrain of free will, a subject that has long fascinated me. Not just whether free will exists, but how we’d ever know if we’re actually exercising it.
Sometimes, patterns only reveal themselves in hindsight. Other times, like in Frost’s poem, we invent them—because we need the comfort of believing our path was intentional.
It’s a strange feeling to look back and see the shape of your life—wondering how much of the blueprint comes from your pen. And how much from somewhere else.
I like to think the decisions I made were mine. Based on the information I had at the time; a general sense of where I wanted to go; and that greatest of human instincts, gut feel.
In short, I took the road that felt right at the time.
4. A Quote to note
“There are things known and there are things unknown. In between there are doors.”
- Jim Morrison
5. A Question for you
When you look back on your life, what patterns do you see—and how might they help shape what comes next?
Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment. Have a great weekend.
James
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