Each year, The Newtown Bee offers a few thoughts to consider to the transitioning senior class of Newtown High School, along with seniors attending other schools in the area, or who are reaching the end of their homeschooling education.

First and foremost, Newtown is proud of you. We have said it before in this space, but reiterate that the good things you do in and for the community — even if it is simply by being thoughtful, conscientious, and responsible young citizens, friends, and family members — should also inspire you to be proud of yourselves.

While high school graduation is a turning point, marking a new chapter in your young lives and unveiling a future full of promise and potential, it is also the culmination of countless achievements amassed over your elementary, middle, and secondary school years you can be equally proud of.

And while high school graduation means leaving behind a legacy of achievements, accomplishments, and memories with classmates behind, it is also the opening of the rest of the world to graduates. The world may look a bit scary now — gas prices are back up, inflation won't go away, and paychecks aren't going as far as they used to — but it is still a world that is wide open to Newtown's graduates. Many roads stretch ahead of them and it's up to them which one to take.

While the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken," talks about taking the road less traveled, it is a widely misunderstood poem in that many think it simply champions making one's own path. While that is certainly admirable and a good way to look at things, that is not the best path for everyone.

Frost wrote the poem as a joke for his friend Edward Thomas, who was often indecisive about which route to take when the two went walking. According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost's biographer, as Frost was once about to read the poem, he commented to his audience, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem — very tricky," perhaps intending to suggest the poem's ironic possibilities.

Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: Belatedly but wistfully, he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected."

A road well traveled into a career one loves, whether it be in law or medicine or business, is a road well picked. Whichever path one chooses, there are wonders to find, and it is best to not dwell on what may have been down another path. Choices must always be made, and must always be lived with.

The road that is best picked will be different for each member of the class, and there is no right or wrong answer. There may be a few paths that end up not being everything you want them to be, but even just the experience of following that path is worth having, even if it doesn’t work out. We always learn more from missteps than we do from success.

As always, we wish the Class of 2026 the absolute best, all the successes and joys, and a bright, bright future.