This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
The poet Robert Frost wrote about two roads diverging in a yellow wood, a moment
when a traveler must choose a path, not knowing where either one leads.
In the poem, the traveler is indecisive, first looking down one path and then another.
The last lines of that poem have become some of the most famous lines in American poetry.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Perhaps you've had moments when you've confronted a similar fork in the road.
Should you stay in the city you're living in or move?
Should you stay with the person you're with or leave?
Should you stick with the job you have or look for a new one?
Many of us peer down the different paths before us, trying to figure out which one will make us happy.
But like that traveler in the woods, we find there isn't enough evidence one way or the other.
We go weeks, months, or years paralyzed by indecision.
And then something happens.
Maybe it's something big.
We get a serious medical diagnosis or someone we love dies.
Or maybe it's something small.
You get a traffic ticket or someone looks at you funny.
And all of a sudden, your dilemma is over.