"Because I Love You, I am Not Here to Entertain You."

 A great and wise man spoke to me and 1,000 of other young adults and this is what he said

"Because I love you, I am not here to entertain you."

What of a world that so revolves around entertainment? When everything calls for our attention, how could this man afford to not entertain us?

The answer for me is simple. Learning through entertainment is fun, but it's not necessary. I have limited time. I have even more limited time for this period of my life which is to strictly learn. My question is, how can I afford to be entertained?

In our current world climate, ads have to be entertaining, movies, books, and heck even when you are telling a story to your friends it's got to be entertaining or else people don't know why you're telling it. Often we equate entertainment to quality...especially, the quality of teaching. Being dry does not mean you are bad at teaching. It might mean you are bad at persuading, but not teaching. As adults, we have the capacity to teach ourselves, find fascination on our own, see meaning in the "dryness."

Love people. Teach them. Don't degrade them by only entertaining them.

It Doesn't Mean Anything

 These days people do things that don't make any sense...they do things for fun - or not even for fun- for literally no actual reason.

Mr. Beast is a good example of this.

Also just Gen Z kids in general.

I often wonder why.

a poem that means nothing

It just so happened 

that I went and took a look 

at the little bittle book 

on the shelf above the bedroom wall. 

Ensconced in there, though I really didn’t care, 

was a hat on the 18th floor.

I took the elevator up, 

and with joy and jubilance 

I rushed past the sorrows and sins of my time.

I took what was there and I didn’t care, 

except for the fact that there was a small little pup. 

With hazel eyes and not a bit of surprise 

it whimpered like it knew who I was.

Complaining is an art

So I took it too.

And left the pup to whimper.

The book and the hat

Never really did anything for me anyway.

The Road Not Taken

 My poems—I should suppose everybody’s poems—are all

set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless.
Ever since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my
blocks carts chairs and such like ordinaries where people
would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark.
Forward, you understand, and in the dark.

 FROST TO LEONIDAS W. PAYNE JR., November 1, 1927

    I'm pretty passionate about this poem because it is so misunderstood. And its real message is actually more important than the misunderstood one, go figure. I find that it really applies to my current life, which is why I'm writing about it now.

    My sister made a pretty good point. In this "Road not Taken" poem, (which is even ironically titled by the way) the most quoted part is 

"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."

    And yet, currently I am taking all sorts of paths in life that are less traveled...I am going to this non-accredited school called Mount Liberty College and will be getting a degree that does not help me get a job, I was homeschooled my whole life, I think the "responsibility" to have a social life is overrated, I work for a chumpy start-up company and don't get paid that much and am often sacrificing a lot of things for this company, (like sleep) I spend a lot of time with my family...my younger siblings and parents heaven forbid, I live at home, my Mom still makes me dinner, need I go on? I have taken the road less traveled, and I can truly say it has made all the difference for me. And yet, never have I felt more abused, persecuted, and wrong! It seems like everyone that likes this poem hates me for my path! I'm being dramatic. I just find the slight hypocrisy demeaning.

It seems as if, just because a road is less traveled does not make it the right path. Crazy! I don't think it's wrong to move out, pay for your own dinner, attend BYU, have friends, or live life differently than I do. I do think it's wrong to put trivial things above actual values. But the poem "The Road Not Taken" is satirical. Robert Frost is a jokester. He was making fun of his friend, and I guess every person ever. From Literary Hub we learn: "In the spring of 1915, Frost sent an envelope to Edward Thomas that contained only one item: a draft of “The Road Not Taken,” under the title “Two Roads.” According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost had been inspired to write the poem by Thomas’s habit of regretting whatever path the pair took during their long walks in the countryside—an impulse that Frost equated with the romantic predisposi­tion for 'crying over what might have been.'"

His friend didn't get the poem. He thought it was a really good poem. So this is what happens.

'Frost writes back on June 26, 1915: 'Methinks thou strikest too hard in so small a matter. A tap would have settled my poem. I wonder if it was because you were trying too much out of regard for me that you failed to see that the sigh [in line 16] was a mock sigh, hypo­critical for the fun of the I don’t suppose I was ever sorry for any­ thing I ever did except by assumption to see how it would feel.'"

Essentially, Frost understood that it really doesn't matter which path you take in life, especially when both paths are "just as fair," and when the paths weren't even less or more traveled because "Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same." We kill ourselves over making decisions and choosing the perfect path... but God's going to use whatever we do for good, if we live according to His values.

It helps me have faith - though I feel like everyone thinks I'm doing the wrong things, I know if I do what I think is right, if I live according to my values, the exact path I take doesn't matter that much. I can be an instrument for God if I believe in what I'm doing, because I believe in God and live a faithful life.

Don't look back on your life and cry over spilled milk, missed opportunities. Don't live your current life thinking you're not meeting every "life quota" because of the path you're taking. Don't champion "the road less traveled" and then turn around and ridicule those who take it. And, please don't recite this poem like it's the most profound thing on earth because I'm telling you - it's really just a joke.