The Road Not Taken

Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

This prayer—speaks to the human condition—about control, acceptance, and resilience in the face of life’s trials. Now let’s take this essence and run it through the filter of a post-truth, fractured world. We’re going to give it that real-world update, pulling it into a place where truth is often contested, and certainty is a rare luxury.

Grant me the clarity to see the chaos for what it is, know when the noise isn’t mine to silence.

Give me the guts to break what needs breaking, the strength to rebuild in the mess I didn’t create.

Teach me when to let go, when to grip harder—To know the difference between control & the illusion of it.

In this rework, we’re not asking for serenity—it’s too passive for the modern age. Clarity is what we need now, to see through the smoke and mirrors. The “courage to change” is still there, but it’s more about breaking and rebuilding, recognizing that the world often gives us pieces, not whole solutions. And the “wisdom to know the difference” isn’t about absolute truth anymore—it’s about knowing when control is real, and when it’s a myth we’ve been sold.

This adaptation shifts from the static wisdom of knowing what’s unchangeable to recognizing the fluidity of postmodern challenges: when to act, when to step back,

another classic example, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” It’s a poem that has been widely interpreted as a reflection on choices and individualism. But in a post-truth context,

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;

Two paths split in the woods—or so it seemed, I stood still, wondering if both were real, or if choice was just the illusion of control.

I stared into the shadow of one, but shadows lie—don’t they? I couldn’t see the end—didn’t need to.

Here, the metaphor of choice, which in the original was about deciding between two literal roads, becomes something more ambiguous and uncertain. In a post-truth era, the idea of clear-cut choices is blurred. The speaker doesn’t trust either road, because who’s to say if the roads even lead anywhere—or if the choices matter at all? In a world of information overload and mistrust of facts, the simple act of choosing becomes layered with doubt.

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,

I chose the other road—maybe because it seemed less walked then, who’s to say?

Maybe the grass was only greener through my eyes, maybe the wear was a story I told myself. What’s real when everything bends underfoot?

In the post-truth version, there’s no certainty about whether the second road was actually “less traveled.” The speaker realizes that perception—the lens through which we see our choices—can distort reality. Maybe the roads weren’t so different after all, but the narrative they built around the choice was what made the difference.

I shall be telling this with a sigh. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, that has made all the difference.

Years from now, I’ll tell this story—the sigh won’t be from wisdom, just weariness.

I’ll say I took the path less traveled, in truth, I don’t know anymore.

Maybe it made no difference. Maybe it’s the story that changed, not the road.

in a post-truth context, the idea of a definitive, world-changing choice seems illusory. We create the meaning after the fact, layering it with emotion, but the reality of the decision may have been arbitrary.

In the post-truth version of Frost’s poem, we play with the idea that nothing is as it seems. The speaker isn’t confident in their choice, because certainty is a luxury we no longer have. The roads aren’t clear, the grass may not have been different, and the final lesson isn’t one of bold individualism, but rather of ambiguous memory and self-constructed truth.

Much like in the post-truth world, the line between what we know and what we perceive gets murky. It’s no longer about which road was better; it’s about the stories we tell ourselves after the fact, to make sense of our lives.