Back to the Future

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Like many if not most people, I’ve had my share of ups and downs in life, but none more devastating than a mental breakdown some 40+ years ago. I lost all self-confidence, saw no future for myself that I could even hope for or dream about. I felt like an empty shell adrift on a lonely sea. 

In the past, I had always managed to rise above if not actually solve my problems, but this time, I felt utterly defeated, trapped by a mindset that remained stubbornly resistant even to

hope. One night, I dreamed of going back to my childhood. Oh, it had been no fairy tale, but nor had it been a nightmare. 

Over several nights, I dreamed about places and people that had made me happy. By day, I’d wish I could go back, and get all the more depressed for knowing there could be no going back. Then I got to wondering… why not? 

During the weeks that followed, I visited places I had loved, even looked up several people I remembered from those days. Nor was it in the least depressing; on the contrary it reminded me how the mind-body-spirit can take a person’s side and help that person to move forward if he or she but cares to listen. I visited places where I grew up, even my old school where I’d been very unhappy, took the train to Brighton where I first met the love of my life who would be killed in a road accident less than a year later…Happy times, sad times, awful times, such times as comprise that tapestry of life unique to each and every one of us. 

Going back was no instant cure for the mental state I was in, but it made me realise that I had in me no less an innate capacity for life and love than anyone else; all I had to do was tap into it. Easier said than done of course, but I made the effort, started writing again, and also joined a local unemployment group; the first step proved to be as positive a creative therapy as it had been in the past while the latter helped me re-learn the art of communicating with other people and sharing ideas, thoughts and feelings. 

Nearly four years later, I started a new job with the help of an organization I discovered once I’d eventually rediscovered the confidence to put such information skills as I had to good use again. It was a long haul; even longer, its shadow that will hang over me always, if only to remind me that, just as our Here-and Now is what we make it, so its roots are in our past and whatever the future may hold is also down to us, quirks of so-called ‘fate’ notwithstanding.

BACK TO THE FUTURE 

Sometimes we need
to go back, the better to move forward,
recover lost inspiration,
motivate ourselves to take a positive view
of life, lost somewhere
along the way among hard times, blind
to woods for their trees,
deaf to well-meant advice for self-pity and fear
overwhelming the senses 

Back, as far as we can…
to recover a feeling for such kinder times
as when we’d run
with loved ones and friends, since shut out
by an unquiet mind,
no sense of belonging, thought processes
all but gone awry,
mind, body and spirit no longer in sync enough
to determine how or why 

A distant cry in the ears,
alerting us to kinder years, inviting us back
to experience once more
whatever it was that once inspired us so then,
but fails us now,
urged us to take our cue from such dreams
as offered a new reality,
no thought then of failure, only of an endeavour
well worth the journey 

Oh, and such a journey...
to other worlds now colluding, now colliding
with ours, the thrills
of taking up, breaking up, and making up again
with all manner of species
among humankind offering love, power, glory
or whatever it might be
we aspire to, by whatever means it takes to twist
and turn the right key 

Looking back, rediscovering
whatever it was in us that kept us moving on
through thick, and thin.
all but forgotten because it never had a name
(not everything does)
but would have me reconcile with and learn
to best nurture
this singular mind-body-spirit comprising all of me
that’s past-present-future 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2021