I don't normally do a written reflection, or rather not since I was younger and even then I think I only did so erratically and without calling them anything so formal. But I do think that birthdays are about a few things (depending on your age, of course): thanking those that gave you life (Thank you, Papa!); spending time with family; fun times; and reflecting on the before and the what's to come. I will say I do like the number 33. It has a nice ring to it. And they can't play the backwards/forwards joke on me this year! I'm the same age either way. So there.
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I read a
poem my Papa wrote a couple of days after his birthday earlier this month (July is heavy on the birthdays in our house, proportionally), and, besides being a very beautiful poem, it got me thinking, and I hope he won't mind too much that it ended up being a bouncing off point of my reflection.
I suppose I was already predisposed to being in a reflective mood - writing... taking a break on Facebook but still pondering the writing (two separate projects bouncing around in my head, one at the forefront, one still trying to stay active in the background)... and the whole birthday coming up in a few short hours thing. So I was thinking both in a general way and in a more personal way about how the poem "Lost Stillness" relates to the way we interact with the world around us, how it speaks to a way of being that may be disappearing or being suppressed underneath a whole array of external and internal influences. I can name many of those that are meaningful to me but even then I would be doing an injustice to the multitude of influences that impact both who I am and who I allow myself to be, just as the same can be said of anyone.
So the old man, to me, represents something I am striving for in my life. I want to be the old man watching the bees. Was not one of my early summer status updates "Chelvanaya dances with the bees"? Ok I'm being half-cheeky but it _was_ me attempting to be poetically humorous about bees inconveniently situated in our yard and having to both find a way to convince them to go elsewhere, and swallow my own fear of the bee, never mind _bees_. All at the same time that I do in fact love watching the bees do that pollination thing, esp. when the weather isn't this flood-like and I have a proper veggie garden going...and I know I'm not purposefully sealing up their new homes and making them angry.
And what the old man has to do when the young man accosts him, or rather, not simply accosts him but moves to attack, to destroy what was so peaceful - this could just as easily be all of those things in one's life that upset the balance but that come from other human beings. Obviously there are the minor annoyances but then there are those things that just go too far, moving in and forcing you to turn away from whatever stillness you are able to achieve in your life. And what do you do? Do you submit?
Of course, my interpretation is a bit outside of the scope of the poem's intent I think but, as I said, the poem got me thinking. It was a sort of bouncing off point. Even the end where the young man is dealt with but it is nowhere near a victory. After all, both sides have lost something fundamental in the struggle... Every time I've had to deal with toxic people and/or situations, I may rationalize in my own head why I needed to do so, why I didn't avoid them, why I didn't turn away (whatever that might mean...sometimes a simple "No" would suffice"), every time ... well, I guess I have to wonder what that does to me. What that does to others. Every interaction is, as the poem reminds us, overdetermined and overdetermining. I forget that a lot. But there are more things..., Horatio. So many more things/people.
So, the story at the heart of the poem is very specific in some ways but going back to my tangential interpretation and reflection, I am thinking that the more I strive to be like the old man in my life, the more likely I am to notice the 'young man' types, i.e. those people and situations who are toxic/dangerous to my goals, whether they be life goals or even just daily goals - and more generally to a sense of balance and peace.
I don't often hear the concepts of goals and objectives and the concepts of balance and peace in the same setting but, for me, they definitely fit together. I can't have one without the other. Which isn't to say that I need a goal in order to stand and look at the rose bush...hardly. The two aren't wedded in a linear temporal fashion. It is simply that I am realizing it is a lot easier to have those tranquil moments of quiet if I spend more quality time on the 'nitty-gritty'.
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And then there's that Earth-sized
hole in the atmosphere of my self-proclaimed 'home planet' a few days before my birthday. I love how some news sites are calling it a "Earth-size scar". Scar. Like we went over there and jacked up Jupiter in some kind of intergalactic planetary fist fight. Yeah. I hereby deny any connection with this incident but... I'm just saying, someone ought to look into it. I don't want any funny business next year. Except
eclipses.
Eclipses are cool.
So... back to writing with me. At some point. Breakfast first! Thanks for reading. And find a reason to smile today...
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