The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (19 page)

As Frost brought forth more and more of what was within him, he felt increasingly split. Was he a farmer? A teacher? A poet? He felt a crossroads coming. He knew that if he was going to bring forth what was deepest within him, he would have to commit to it completely. He would have to “try himself,” as he said.

At the end of the decade at Derry, now a fully formed poet in command of his voice, he had one more step to take. He would have to take the leap. He would have to declare himself a poet—both to the world and to himself. He would have to explicitly
commit his life to poetry—
to give everything he had.

“
No man can know what power he can rightly call his own unless he presses a little,” he wrote. It was time to press.

10

Frost and his wife Elinor would now make a stunning choice. They would sell the farm and move to England, where Robert could devote himself
entirely
to his poetry. This was not an easy choice. In retrospect, of course, it looks obvious. But in the moment, it was not obvious at all. It was a leap off a cliff.

Frost was aware that these kinds of choices meant cutting off other options. He named his great poem “The Road Not Taken,” precisely because
of his awareness of the possibilities
lost
when one chooses. Frost was properly fascinated with the process of choice. If one looks closely at “The Road Not Taken,” one discovers the many ambiguities written there about choice. The “two roads” are, after all, not that very different. “Both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black,” he writes. The signs were vague, indistinct. How to choose?

What Frost makes clear in his poem is that
the act of choosing
is the most important thing. The act of moving forward is what matters. He might have chosen either teaching or poetry. But he had to choose one or the other. He looked long down each path. He understood the loss involved—the cutting off of possibilities. He saw clearly that options once discarded are usually gone forever. Way leads on to way.

But Krishsna writes:
Concerning one’s dharma, one should not vacillate!

Frost was now determined to give himself fully to poetry—to live, as he said, “
a life that followed poetically.” What followed was an explosion of creativity. Having made his decision, Frost was increasingly on fire with poetry. He would publish his first two books in England—to considerable acclaim—and would return to America several years later a famous poet.

Thoreau, of course, had had an almost identical experience. As soon as he made a commitment to his authentic voice, as soon as he moved back to his
axis mundi
, to Concord, to his immovable spot, his voice gained an energy, a clarity, and a power that it had never had. The choice itself had unleashed something altogether new.
Actions taken in support of dharma change the self. The act of commitment itself calls forth an unseen dharma power
.

This very principle was often invoked by the German philosopher Goethe, and it was vividly articulated by the English explorer W. A. Murray when he was writing about his own dharma choices—particularly his decision to undertake an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. He wrote: “
Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.”

Murray continues: “Concerning all acts of initiative, and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself
then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s concepts: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.’ ”

Boldness has magic in it. Frost understood this principle. He saw that his decision to take the leap, to move to England, to fully commit to poetry, had given birth to some entirely new energy and creativity in himself. Most likely everyone who has committed himself to dharma has independently discovered this same phenomenon.

11

Several years ago, I was in New York raising money for our Institute. Thomas, one of my board members, a prominent doctor, asked me to join him briefly at a cocktail party before we headed off for a business dinner. I arrived at a stunning penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And I was completely unaware, until I saw the sign on the door, that I had just arrived at the New York apartment of my long-absent friend Ethan. I could barely breathe as we entered the foyer.

I hadn’t seen Ethan in fifteen years. But there he was. I saw him immediately from across the room, and he looked remarkably the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. Handsome. Tanned. And holding forth loudly to a group of suited men and women. He seemed angry. I quickly had the sinking feeling that something was off here. Was Ethan drunk? He was publicly berating one of the younger men in the group, who turned out to be one of his young associates. Everyone was embarrassed. Where was Betts, I wondered? What in the world was going on?

Ethan didn’t recognize me at first. Twenty years had made a difference in my appearance. I realized that if I did not introduce myself, Ethan would never know I was there. I wondered for a moment if I wanted to “meet” him again, especially under these awkward circumstances.

I did introduce myself. Ethan was stiff in response, and made an
awkward joke to the group. I was stunned. There was no warmth. He quickly made a comment about getting together, but I doubted that I would hear from him.

I was shaking—with trauma or with anger, I don’t know which. Thomas took me aside and told me the story: Ethan had not practiced medicine for many years—relying instead on the considerable fortune that Betts had inherited from her father, and dedicating his life to golf and to making the rounds of New York society. Now the couple was involved in a very public and very nasty divorce. But all of that aside, confessed Thomas, Ethan had long ago become a boor—a trait apparently fueled by too much alcohol. And we had caught him well into his cups that night.

As I said good-bye to Ethan, I was barely breathing. Just for a moment, he seemed to crack. Did I see some trace of embarrassment? There was something in his eyes, certainly.

I felt as though I had just been part of a scene from a bad movie. How ever had Ethan ended up like this? My board member friend and I went out for a couple of drinks, and then on to dinner. We talked late into the night, examining the trajectory of our lives. I told him of the Ethan I had known in college. Of the decisions I had been witness to—decisions that in retrospect may have led Ethan away from his authentic calling.

A life is built on a series of small course corrections—small choices that add up to something mammoth. What string of fateful decisions had landed Ethan so very far from home?

12

Robert Frost’s archetypal poems are often about a journey: A lone wanderer is lost in a swamp, untethered from his inner moorings. How shall he decide which direction to go? How will he find his way out of the swamp? A hiker is caught on the side of a mountain in a storm. Should he continue on to the summit or turn back? In these poetic treks through the inner wilderness, almost every moment is a crossroads. The hiker must pay close attention—must listen, must look, must feel. The choices made at each crossroads are cumulative—and irreversible.

Looking back at his life with the perspective of old age, Robert Frost
saw with some satisfaction the series of decisions that led to his fulfillment as a poet.
I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence
. He saw clearly how each decision marked a deeper commitment of his time, energy, and life force to the project of his poetry. With each step he cut off other options. Where did he find the courage?

Frost’s genius—like Thoreau’s, like Goodall’s, like Whitman’s—was at least in part his willingness to create the right conditions for his dharma to issue forth. His dharma required a farm—and so he bought one. His dharma required him to give up teaching—and so he relinquished it. His dharma required a period of intense work in England—and so he went.