“The best way out is always through.” – Teach Different with Robert Frost

Transcript

Steve (00:00)

Welcome to the Teach Different Podcast. Hope everybody’s doing well. We have a quote from Robert Frost today. A short quote, which is going to be really thought-provoking, and I’ve already got some good ideas on how I want to approach it. But Dan, I’ll let you introduce. I’m here with Dan Fouts, my brother, and you’re going to introduce where this came from.

 

Dan (00:29)

Robert Frost, American poet, one of the more famous American poets. A Servant to Servants, published in the North of Boston, 1914. So North of Boston is the collection. He has a really interesting line. That line is on perseverance, the theme of perseverance. So we’re hoping that this quote, which I’m gonna read in a moment, is speaking to be something that you can apply no matter who you are. You could be a student, a teacher, community member, or whatever. This is applicable in all different settings. So here it is. I’ll read it a couple times and we’ll just dive right in. Robert Frost. The best way out is always through. The best way out is always through. I’ll just hop into the claim here. It sounds like if you’re in some sort of predicament or a struggle or a situation that you must get out of in some way, that the best way to do that is to just go through it, to push through it. I think the perseverance theme emerges here in this claim of this quote, and it’s purposely vague here. But yeah, go through it.

 

Steve (01:57)

Yeah, you gotta read a lot into this. The best way out. You know, because when you say way out, you’re thinking you’re trapped or you’re stuck. But you know, again, I’m just reading that into it. And I think it is a perseverance quote. And through to me means confronting the problem. And I’m thinking of mental anguish. Something’s bothering you. You don’t want to have a conversation with like a good friend because you can’t agree on anything. You don’t want to look somebody in the eye because you can’t stand them. But you have to say something to them that’s unpleasant, but you don’t know really how to do it. What do most people do? They just avoid it because it’s easy to avoid things. So in this context, avoiding something that you know you should be doing would be taking the easy way out. you know, avoiding it. This one is always through. So the best way out is always through. Go right to the heart of it. Have that difficult conversation. And you’ll be better for it.

 

Dan (03:26)

And I’m looking at I did a little bit of research on what Frost is referring to with this quote. And he’s actually connecting this to a woman who feels trapped with the exhausting demands of her life, physical labor, the emotional distress, and her husband actually tells her this as a way to to coach her as to how to deal with the situation.

 

Steve (03:54)

Okay.

 

Dan (03:55)

Which is interesting. I mean that obviously it’s interesting.

 

Steve (03:57)

Well, that fits kind of what we were saying.

 

Dan (03:59)

Very much so and reading that poem and seeing it in context is a really good way to get the spirit of what Frost is saying. But what’s nice about these Teach Different conversations is that you take that wisdom like what we’re doing right now and we’re lifting it out of a context and now applying it to our lives. So in that spirit.

 

Steve (04:19)

Well, let’s apply it then.

 

Dan (04:20)

Let’s apply it. What would be a good personal experience? Do you have one where this quote would be true?

 

Steve (04:29)

Mm. Mine has something to do with going to Chicago. Well, I had this sense that I wanted to go teach in a more difficult environment, and I wanted to go to a city to teach. Like a big city. But you know, you and I were not born in a big city. We were born, you know, in Illinois, lived on the West Coast, and I get out of college and I just say, you know, I want to go. And teach in Chicago, and nobody really thought that was a very good idea. But it plagued me. I mean, it was something that I’m not gonna say it tortured me, in a good way, I was thinking there’s something I need to be doing, and I knew the only way I was gonna get rid of the itch was to do it. Like it was too much weighing on me that if I would have not done it. I always would have questioned myself and I’m maybe straying a little bit from this, but that’s what I feel like. I knew at the time that I had to do it, even though I knew it was gonna be hard and unpredictable.

 

Dan (05:42)

So the best way out, were you trying to get out of your fear and uncertainty? What were you trying to get out of?

 

Steve (05:49)

Well, yeah, I wanted just stability because you get out of college, you’re looking for a job, you know, you want to have a place where you start a life. I was like, I came back to Springfield and I was just sitting here like, okay, what am I gonna do? And to go to Chicago, it added a layer of uncertainty with an already uncertain situation. So I just said, you know what? No, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna go and I’m gonna go teach, you know, in some of the toughest areas in the city. And then I wanna see, you know, what happens, see what kind of a teacher I can become.

 

Dan (06:28)

Mine is also related to teaching, but it’s, and I brought this up in other episodes, public speaking. The fear of public speaking was a huge fear for me in high school and in college. If I applied this quote to the trajectory of my life and how I was afraid of public speaking and then became comfortable doing it in my teaching career, I think I adopted what Frost says here, the best way out is always through. So I was trying to get out of my discomfort and anxiety of speaking in front of people by going through it and actually doing it on a consistent basis and learning through repetition that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. That’s the best example I can come up with, I think, where that’s the case.

 

Steve (07:22)

I’m thinking of that quote from, was it, Winston Churchill who said If you’re going through hell, keep going?

 

Dan (07:29)

No, it was attributed to him.

 

Steve (07:31)

It was attributed, right?

 

Dan (07:32)

Nobody knows who said that one. But yeah, if you’re going through hell, keep going. That’s a similar theme to this. Yeah.

 

Steve (07:40)

Yeah, but it’s the same, it’s the same idea. So I’m wondering what else is there to really, I mean, the question you’d pose to the kids would be, you know, how much who’s had an experience here of being you know, really, really afraid of something that you ended up just kind of pushing it through. And you put aside your fear or whatever and overcame it. I mean that’s —

 

Dan (08:11)

That’s storytelling right there. Have you ever been in a situation that you didn’t feel like you could get out of? How did you push through it? What did you do to emerge from that situation? By the way, this is giving kids and anybody in this conversation permission to show when they showed courage to do something. And a lot of people —

 

Steve (08:37)

I would say grit, not courage, necessarily.

 

Dan (08:41)

But I don’t know. Courage. Sometimes to stick with something and to get through something takes a measure of courage as well. That you’re not you’re not giving up on it. But yeah, I mean that courage could be used in different settings.

 

Steve (08:51)

I like grit. All right, so do the counterclaim.

 

Dan (08:57)

Counterclaim. Sometimes the best way out—

 

Steve (09:01)

Is to get the out.

 

Dan (09:03)

Is to get out, is to avoid it.

 

Steve (09:06)

I’m thinking of that movie. Wasn’t it called Get Out?

 

Dan (09:09)

Yeah.

 

Steve (09:10)

That was such a good movie.

 

Dan (09:11)

Go around it. Don’t go through it.

 

Steve (09:12)

You know, I believe both of these, you know, because there’s so much mess you can get into, and you’re struggling, you’re trying to figure stuff out, you’re like you’re around bad people, you’re in a bad environment. And sometimes just fly the coop. Don’t try to stick it out, don’t try to suffer fools. Just leave the situation. You know, go, you know, meditate, go sit. Cross legged by a river alone.

 

Dan (09:47)

Well can conserve your energies for something that you’ll be more successful with and that is more worth your time. You know, and I be if you apply this actually to personal relationships, you know, the best the best way out is always through. You know, sometimes confronting other people is just exhausting and you don’t get anything good out of it. And avoiding people in certain situations is the best plan. I think it can apply to that definitely. Or if you’re learning, yeah.

 

Steve (10:22)

I got another one. I mean, it’s not, think of an experience. We should be better at these experiences. We’re but we’re philosophers, so we come up with different ways to put it.

 

Dan (10:30)

Yeah. We’ll get specifics. We’ll get specific.

 

Steve (10:33)

Well, I gotta start with this. I could rewrite the quote and say, the best way out is to reflect and learn from your mistakes. Okay? Now That’s different than saying always through, because through implies to me that you’re gonna still go at it, you’re not gonna stop and actually reflect about the poor decisions you made to get yourself in this situation, you’re gonna get yourself out of it, and then tomorrow you might end up doing the exact same thing. So you got perseverance, you got grit, you got courage, but you also are like a hamster in a wheel. You’re not really learning about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. You’re not discerning. So that’s another counterclaim to this. You could argue, I think reflecting and learning are more important than persevering and getting through.

 

Dan (11:31)

And it’s funny because when you say reflecting and learning, I would say that would have more, I’m going back to the claim here. That would have more value after you’ve pushed through it. And then you could see, okay, what did I just do? Was it something that was worth it or not? So yeah, but I know what you’re saying. Reflect before you push through and decide whether or not it’s even worth it to push through. However, sometimes you have to push through it to position yourself to reflect on it. but I like that. I like the reflection of an add on here.

 

Steve (12:09)

But yes, it is so different. Have you ever found yourself in an argument with someone or getting really angry with someone? But then if you think about it, you actually understand why they’re angry and what you may have done that would have like set them off. The minute that you reflect and understand that, you’re not pushing through the conflict. Okay, you’re not continuing the conversation and the anger, you’re literally sh probably being quiet, you’ve got a little humility, and you might be even listening to someone who’s really angry with you, and and you’re going through it, and yes, it’s difficult, but you’ve got to realize and take an account that you’re part of the reason that this person is in this state. It was something you did.

 

Dan (13:10)

Sure. Sure. So sometimes reflection works if you have the ability to catch yourself like that. Other times you gotta go through it and then you only learn through that. So it kind of, it depends on the person. The counterclaim is interesting. The best way out is always through. You know, I’m thinking of a question here. How do I know when I should just push through something? That is difficult for me. How do I know to just keep the gas on the pedal and just get through it? And then how do I know when to sidestep it, reflect, and avoid going through it?

 

Steve (14:01)

What’s worth the headache?

 

Dan (14:04)

When is it worth it?

 

Steve (14:05)

When is perseverance worth it? And when is it not.

 

Dan (14:10)

Foolish.

 

Steve (14:11)

Yeah, foolish.

 

Dan (14:13)

When is perseverance a waste of time?

 

Steve (14:16)

Yeah, I would love to force everybody to answer that question. When have you pushed through something and realized later that that was not necessary?

 

Dan (14:26)

Yeah, right.

 

Steve (14:27)

That’s to me, that’s most arguments. When people get into arguments, I think it’s 90% of the time it’s a communication problem. They’re not listening to each other. Not maybe not ninety percent, but a lot. And if people did that more, I think that there would be less conflict and less struggle. But everybody’s afraid to be humble because it’s a weakness. That’s this world.

 

Dan (15:00)

And also I’m thinking about, you know, what type of person is able to push through struggles? You know, what type of

 

Steve (15:09)

Someone who has no choice.

 

Dan (15:11)

Yeah, sometimes they have no choice.

 

Steve (15:13)

Ooh. Now I am thinking about like a homeless person or someone that’s struggled, like the best way out is always through the it’s almost a privilege to say that you can do something other than go straight through it. It’s a privilege if you have the option of not. having to survive and struggle for that. You could just do something else. Yeah, I’ll go over here. You know, but that’s not, that’s a luxury.

 

Dan (15:50)

If maybe, yeah, if people don’t have the option, then it’s just it is kind of a privileged way to look at it to say, well, I could I could do many different things, I could persevere, or I could do other things. Most of the time people find themselves in difficult situations and they have to go through it in a certain way and survive. So yeah.

 

Steve (16:11)

Well and that’s what I like about his advice to this you said it was to a lady. He’s basically saying, you know, if you’re tormented, you’re gonna have to confront this. Like you have to go right at this, otherwise it’s never gonna go away. You’re obviously not gonna let it go.

 

Dan (16:28)

And you know, I’m thinking of students who have jobs and they take care of their siblings at home and they go to school, which applied to a lot of the students at the high school I taught at. Many would I think look at this quote and talk about the difficulty and the emotional and financial burdens of what they’re doing. And would have some interesting things to say about whether the best way out is always through. I think many back to kind of what we said before, out of survival, yeah, it is the best way out. It’s the only way out. You don’t have a choice. I can just hear them say that right now.

 

Steve (17:14)

I’ll add this thing, grief. You know, when dad and Susan, our sister, died. Dealing with that grief, think about how mom dealt with it. She just would break down just in the middle of a sentence for six months. You’d never know when it was happening, but that’s how she did it. She wasn’t gonna get around it, she was gonna go through it. I definitely did not go through the grief. You know, mine has been more like slower and I’ve felt like I’ve been in more control of it.

 

Dan (17:49)

You’re more cerebral about it.

 

Steve (17:51)

Well, I mean whatever, I’ll use what I got, but —

 

Dan (17:54)

Yeah. No, I know. I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle. Everybody processes it differently. Yeah, and maybe I would you say that with grief the best way out is always through it, regardless of how you go through it. You get it done somehow, yes.

 

Steve (18:10)

You could argue because you get it done. You get it done. And if you let it sit and you’re getting around it, it’s gonna come out somehow and it might not be healthy. That’s what a psychologist would say.

 

Dan (18:26)

Yeah.

 

Steve (18:27)

Yeah, but when is the, you know, what are the battles you have to fight and persevere in? And what are the battles you need to avoid?

 

Dan (18:36)

Yep. Good quote.

 

Steve (18:39)

Robert Frost

 

Dan (18:41)

Robert Frost from his poem A Servant to Servants published in a 1914 collection called North of Boston. And here’s the actual here’s the actual passage. Len is the husband of woman who is struggling with all these different things. I’ll just read the quick part of the poem. Len says, one steady pull. More ought to do it. He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or insofar as that I can see no way out but through.

 

Steve (19:22)

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, you have to come to the point where there is no way out. So of course the best way is the only way. Through. That’s Teach Different. Look for a new website in a couple weeks. We got a cool little phrase on the home page of the website. We hope people will take to what Teach Different means and what conversations mean in our world today. So thank you for being here.

 

Dan (19:55)

Yeah, thanks so much and enjoy this conversation with whomever you want and keep having them because we need them. They’re good for our mental and intellectual health. Take care, everybody.

 

Steve (20:07)

Take care.