Miles to Go Before I Sleep

I've always had a thing for Robert Frost. One of my first memories as a kid was finding the tattered copy of his poems in my family's bookshelf & putting little hearts and stars next to his name as I fanned the pages of his writings.

For a long while my favorite poems by him were the standard Road Not Taken and Fire and Ice, but recently I've pondered on another: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

At first glance, it seems to be just a beautiful sonnet about him traveling through a cold, white winter's night to get to his home or to a companion's house. He paints a gorgeous picture of a wooded forest filling up with snow and sparkling under the moonlight as he stops for a while to gaze at the scene before him.

But, lately I've gotten another perspective on this poem. I've started getting into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, watching shows like BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch, and now I've started to get into CBS's Elementary with Johnny Miller. It's an interesting take on the beloved tale, where Sherlock's character is a recovering drug addict barely released from rehab when the series begins. The 3rd to last episode, when Sherlock is supposed to celebrate his one year mark of being sober, he confesses to his partner Watson, played by Lucy Liu, that he relapsed the day after he was admitted & that it really isn't his one year anniversary. He then says, "to anyone else it is a minor detail, but I am a man of detail & it matters to me."

At the end of the episode, Watson gives him a present & said it reminded her of him & his situation. When he opens the package, he finds that it is a picture frame with the last stanza of this same Robert Frost poem,

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

To me, I took it as symbolic of Sherlock's struggle in his progress of working towards staying sober, in addition to his progress in assisting the police in solving various & assorted crimes.

But that got me thinking about my mission... I believe that truth & beauty & inspiration comes in many forms, and that certain aspects of the world are still "good" or "noteworthy" or "praiseworthy." And as I thought on this poem, I thought of how much that sentiment of "promises to keep" and "miles to go before I sleep", will help me in times when I do want to stop moving forward and do want to maybe take a break or give up.

Robert Frost gently reminds me that I still have much more to do, and many more miles ahead on my journey. I've started many projects and finished so little of them that I feel as if maybe in giving as much of myself as I can to my mission; in serving, in teaching, in learning, and then returning honorably, I will be able to keep at least one of the promises I've made.

However, even after a mission, a wedding, children, careers & life changes, all of us have miles to go before we sleep & many promises to keep. Until we leave this mortal coil, may we all complete our journey.