Growing

I wanted to share this poem with all of you. I am sure most of you are already familiar with it. It struck me deep in my heart as it reminded me if here & some of you. I have grown to love many and some to be in awe of a few.

I have learned from this board it is okay to not be liked by everyone. It is okay not to care for everyone. It is okay not to be there for everyone. I no longer hold such great expectations of myself. I no longer think I have to solve everyone's problems, concede to everything everyone else wants. I have learned my happiness does not depend on someones else views of me.

I have learned relationships sometimes run their course. It does not mean anyone failed, rather that time & life changes made it no longer necessary.

That is what I get from this poem. You all might see something else. Isn't that what great poets do? Write something that everyone identifies with? Anyway, here it is:

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

That was a beautiful share Jaded...as I read through it awakened in me some things that resonate deeply....as a young girl growing up I didnt lose very much at all...and I think when suddenly when we are faced with a succession of losses it triggers some very deep layers that need to come. Interestingly the universe is showing me lately that we do lose things everyday and in showing me some rather difficult and often unexplainable things I realize now that is part of the mystery they were trying to show...that some things are unexplainable, no reasons no rhymes we just lose them.

Looking at it from a spiritual angle, the only thing we really, truly have is our spirit/soul, and that we need to lose the ego in order to find. Seriously, as I move further into the spiritual, I find that anything that is physical, doesn't really matter all that much anymore. It is all something to be used while I am in the physical realm, nothing more and nothing less.

Thanks for sharing the poem, Shell.

((Nan)) You have been onn my mind alot lately.