The road less travelled |
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Robert Frost in his poem The Road Not Taken wrote:
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; 5 Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; T hough as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, 10 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. 15 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. |
This website is aimed at exploring what it means to strike out in a new direction, to take an unpopular stance or to do things which are simply different. New Zealand is not the conformist society of the early Twentieth Century but it still does not welcome innovation and people who want to try something different. At its worst, we get on soap boxes and proclaim that the country needs to be innovative but we really don't want to be innovated ourselves. The reformer is still someone who wants to reform everyone but himself, who thinks (if he thinks at all) that the old ways of doing things will get us to new directions.
Why are peole like this? So may of us want life to be like a pair of old slippers, warm, comfortable and familiar and we really only like the idea of innovation. Managers and those aspiring to positions of management will spout the rhetoric of innovation but are afraid of it, because there are too many uncertainties. No one loses their job through being conservative and safe. Innovation is unfamiliar. There's no telling where it might lead to. It's too risky. We might fail, or embarrass someone important. Let's pretend to like innovation but keep a tight rein on anything which looks unfamiliar. |