Tags
Aging, Instructions for the Journey, Pat Schneider, poem, poetry, renewal, self, transformation, unfolding
Instructions for the Journey
The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don’t grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds its skin:
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.
It’s easy to lose this tenderly
unfolding moment. Look for it
as if it were the first green blade
after a long winter. Listen for it
as if it were the first clear tone
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.
And if all that fails,
wash your own dishes.
Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink.
Let cold water run between your fingers.
Feel it.
By Pat Schneider
This poem speaks to me. The older I become in years, the rawer and newer I feel, the more unfinished. The more expansive. As if there never will be an end to me, and I will ever be unfolding in some time out of mind, or mind out of time.
Yes, cold water running between my fingers.
I’m like that.
The cold, the water, the fingers.
The wet, raw, feel of it all.
Just like that.
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Lovely poem Deborah and kudos on feeling raw and unfinished. I seem to be moving toward feeling less, stuck, and life slipping away from me.
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Ah, I’ve been there too, feeling less, stuck, life slipping away. I even wrote a poem about it, life slipping like sand through my fingers. As if life is just blink of an eye, and even that nanosecond, I squandered. All that “infinite potentiality” I felt in my youth wasted, and no one but myself to blame. What a dark, despairing place that was to dwell. I think many of us, perhaps all of us have felt that way at times. It may be just part of the journey that we all must pass through. I know some can get stuck there, and it feels like being stuck while there.
I’ve been thinking a long while how to respond to your comment, for it hits me in a powerful way. While I feel “unstuck” now, I despair for my son at times, because I know he feels that way too, and I feel that way about him at times. It’s a horrible place to dwell. I haven’t been able to help him and doubt my words here will help you. But this I know: He is so much more than the situation he finds himself stuck in, which is quite dire. Addicted to heroin, homeless, unwilling to get help, to try to “get his life back,” which is how I see it. He sees this as his life now, not so much by choice but because the amount of work it would take to get back on track after having done so many times, only to lose it all over again, is too despairing to even contemplate. To try again only to lose it all again? He can’t go there. So he stays where he is.
Yet, what I know is that even where he is, is life, is him–his goodness, his love, his compassion, his creativity, his intelligence and ingenuity, his strength and courage. All these qualities are what he is, what I love about him, which make him not only worthy of my love, but worthy of Love, of this extraordinary life here on this extraordinary planet, in whatever way we come to spend that seeming nanosecond.
But I’m convinced that within that nanosecond is an eternity in which for him to explore all that he is. I don’t really believe in time anymore as a “thing.” It’s just a conception, the way we experience life in the present. But there is more to us than “time” allows to be. We are actually timeless, even as the qualities that comprise us are timeless and they can be expressed in whatever situation we find ourselves, even in those that seem hopeless.
Maybe this is just a mother’s wishful thinking, a way to bypass the despair. I know he thinks that. But I know what I know, and it doesn’t feel wishful, it doesn’t feel hopeful, it doesn’t feel like something I want for him, it feels like what is. If it’s a bypass, it’s a bypass of what is not real, the shadow, not the tree, I see my son in all his glory, what he is, not what he could be. And while I don’t know you at all, except for what I read in your blog and your comments here, I see you in all your glory too. This other is just shadow. And while it’s a dark cold place, it’s not you. It’s just a place. You will pass through it, and so will he. Of this I’m sure. I really am. There’s no uncertainty here at all.
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Thank you for the incredibly kind and thoughtful and reply. I know my worth, spirit, love, etc intellectually, but have let myself and my life slip into despair and disrepair. No big challenges like you son, just don’t find the motivation or spark to live more fully or make changes in my life. I hope your son finds his way to break through to love, joy, and living more fully.
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Thank you Brad. I feel certain you both will.
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“This other is just shadow. And while it’s a dark cold place, it’s not you. It’s just a place. You will pass through it, and so will he.”
What a declaration of truth – hard to see and/or feel at times, but yes…
Thank you for the inadvertent ‘update’ on your son – a hard ‘place’ indeed.
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Thank you, flower-sister. It’s hard to know when to speak of him and how. But it did me good to do so here.
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Being in the middle of it can be hard to see the roles chosen for us, to make sense of it, to find answers to the whys. It is not wishful thinking, it’s a knowing, a seeing, beyond. Beautiful heartfelt words Deborah.
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Thank you for that, Claire. The “whys” are hard. But I know you know what I’m talking about, and it feels good to connect with those who do.
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