Decision-making by itself is not a simple affair. It involves a great deal of brain work. However, reaching a decision becomes a formidable challenge when you have to face the problem of choosing one thing out of the two. You feel yourself standing at the crossroads, knowing not what to do or not to do.

“To be on the horns of a dilemma”, is the phrase that is used to describe this state of mind.

I confronted the same problem, sometimes ago, as I had two options at my disposal and I was required to choose one of them. I was in a fix and didn’t know what to do. How should I choose one thing over the other? What should be the criterion for my making a choice? What would be the consequences of my decision?

What if I couldn’t make the right choice? How would my choice affect the others? There were so many question marks.

Anyhow, Robert Frost’s poem “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” aptly described my confused state of mind.

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.

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