Satisfaction or Convention: Which is the Path for You?

Brian Krushel is a friend who shares a passion for people and their potential. I found his musings on Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken (and especially the last few lines), "Two roads diverged in a wood and I / I took the one less traveled by / and that has made all the difference", most insightful.


For him: "[i]t speaks a great truth, a truth that we know in our heart of hearts - that well worn paths do not always lead to the finest places; sometimes one must travel another path, an alternate route, the roads less traveled, to find the things that truly satisfy.”

“What would this world be without those people who ‘looked down one as far as [they] could...then took the other’? It’s what drives innovation and creativity, it is what makes good people great people. Most of the great inventors of our world, I dare say, were people who sought out an alternate way to do something. Artists, especially the truly great ones, are usually people who view the world from a different vantage point. Some of the greatest minds of our generation and generations previous belong to people who take the winding overgrown paths just off to the side of the path most take. The road less traveled will not get you to destinations known, but sometimes it gets you somewhere better.”

I think Brian reaches to the heart of the matter. We ask of leaders to be visionaries but gingerly side step the personal cost to them: of separation or maybe isolation or exclusion to some degree. It is the elephant in the room. A true vision must insinuate criticism of what is. Therefore, leaders must expect to raise the ire of those who guard the status quo.

For those that have no choice but to follow a singular path, such knowing is liberating if a little grinding. But it does transform the angst of lonliness into aloneness. It is an important step in a true leader's journey, along with a "recognition that we all share this human experience together". 

Only then, do leaders have the capacity to inspire others to follow, initially - one at a time. The first followers are the champions who will make it safe for others to follow by making "Me to We" possible. It is deep work upon which the foundations of the future rest. 

Alas, true innovation cannot occur without capturing the imagination of those who posses the many kinds of leadership required to turn a vision into a reality. Instead, we've accepted leaders who haven't really ventured off the "well worn path" and forgiven them for never going in search of "the things that truly satisfy”, because they gave us the balm of convention and it did, until now.

Armed with such clarity, my many moments of struggle and even despair would have been accepted as part of the journey, rather than indicators of weakness.  I wish I'd known this in my youth.