self conclusion

Forget about everyone who's jaded...

Isn't that everyone?

Seems like quite a task to forget about them all. I quite like some of them. As hard as that might be to believe.

Oh The Spill Canvas...you're so wise, but sometimes your logic is a little flawed.
I'd be jaded if I was filled with as much angst as you seem to be.
Oh WAIT a minute...

Ready for some more philosophising on life? I know I am.
I read this beautifully poignant poem the other day. Now I know copying and pasting poetry isn't the best way to keep readers, but I suggest you at least skim your eyes over it. In 30 years time it'll probably seem like something you should have remembered. For now, it's filled with the sense of future that both intimidates and fascinates me.

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

What do you think he's saying? I have my ideas. I'll refrain from literary analysis, but there's a few things it makes me think about.

The person doing the greeting (who I know I shouldn't do, but I immediately assume is a woman) seems to have learnt to love themselves. After years of putting all their hope into someone else, maybe more than one person, they have realised that instead of obsessing over the love of another, they must bask in the sunlight of themselves. You can't pin all of your hopes on to someone else. Trust yourself to be beautiful.

It may, of course, be that they have lost a loved one. That through this grief they will come to terms with what they have. They will be filled with elation at their own life. But I think I prefer what I initially thought. Gut reactions might not always be right, but I find with personal interpretation that sometimes you have to defend your own opinion to the death. Otherwise how do you differentiate literature from maths? Finding a bit of yourself in anothers words is what makes it so utterly compelling. You might not like Holden Caulfield, but I challenge you to find a human being on this planet that hasn't felt like he did at some point. It can be terrifying that we relate to someone that seems to be so lost and confused and angry with life. But he's just a construct. An embodiment of millions of people's lives all rolled into one. Gosh I love that book.

Maybe in 30 years time, I'll read this poem again and I'll find a whole new meaning from it. For now I'll just hold on to the parts I can fit around my own state of being the best and tell myself that to live off of anothers looks, is to not live at all.