All Change

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

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” - Anne Frank

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” – John Milton (Paradise Lost).

I have to confess I struggled with todays' poem; the confused state of my thought processes down to IT problems made me feel as if I was losing touch with any creative ideas altogether. New technology is not only a challenge I can barely meet halfway these days, but one I suspect, with which many older folks around the world are having difficulty finding ways of coping. Yes, I will be 77 later this year, but that is not considered 'old' by many people, not these days anyway. And, yes, I have some good friends to help me. But...

Ah, but I am also retired and live alone, as are a growing number or people in the world today.  When we find ourselves staring into The Abyss, there is  - more often than not - only willpower to prevent our tumbling over the edge.

Now, age is not necessarily the only diet on which our more positive life forces need to get right in order to function well, enable us to fulfil whatever potential drives us, for better or worse. The circumstances in which we find ourselves as we grow up, older, and (hopefully) wiser with regard to best dealing with what some call 'fate' or 'destiny' - plays no insignificant part. As regular readers will know, I count myself among those who would contend that, to no small degree, we create our own 'fate' or 'destiny' with whatever tools or talents we are gifted by the life forces within us. 

One such tool, and often the hardest to use, is the ability to 'think happy'. So, how do we think happy when our lives take a sudden nosedive? Good question, and no easy answers. I know it sounds trite to resort to such old sayings as 'Where there's life, there's hope' - but it is so true. Hopes is possibly the best motivator for having us rise to some emotional and/ or physical challenge, make the best of a bad job... whatever... and move on, driven by a Willpower provided by sheer resilience with Hope at the wheel... Such, I suspect is the nightmare situation in which not only the people of Ukraine are facing, but also those feeling trapped in 'living nightmares' at home and abroad; indeed, all refugees seeking a better, kinder, emotional and/ or physical landscape.

So how do we 'think happy' when we are in the depths of despair or heading that way? Good question, and no easy answers. While the quotations above may give a clue to how yours truly has coped with the highs and lows of life, everyone has to find their own way. Most of us do, sooner or later; in many if not most cases, including yours truly, tending to be later a lot more often than sooner...

ALL CHANGE

Waking to a beautiful sunrise
on yet another day of having to contend
with such demands as modernity
is inclined to impose on mind-body-spirit
that heart-and-soul are hard put
to play its part, constantly undermined
by ageing thought processes
unable to keep pace with an ever-changing world
where ‘progress’ is the password

As inspirational any dawn may be,
even to the suffering heart-and-soul awakening
to a barrage of slings and arrows
scoring direct hits designed to weaken, render it
more vulnerable to everyday forces
always making excuses that they mean well,
designed as aids to modern life,
not weapons meant to give various powers that be
greater control over this ’n’ that society

Yet, there lies within the heart-and-soul
of human nature a potentially greater affinity
with peace than war, no matter
what mines a changing world may choose to lay
across such finer landscapes as arts 
and sciences seeking to compensate for the worst
that any less noble one-upmanship
seeks to present itself (under a various false colouring)
to heart-and soul, ‘progress’ notwithstanding

Day, come to shine such light across the world
as even refugees made to move on from life forces
familiar, loved and treasured so
can hope to find others, be as inspired by them
as by happier times engraved
on heart-and-soul, feeding into mind-body-spirit,
a native willpower refusing
to be put down for long by enemies without and within,
but take their cue from tomorrow’s rising sun

Though enemy forces may appear to defeat,
even kill it, they invariably underestimate the power
of mind-body-spirit to rise above
the worst of things, make its peace with the past,
not only look positively to the future,
but also reset, recharge, and customise it,
reasoning with heart-and-soul that nothing less than
a whole will do, no paradise lost (ever) quite irredeemable,
can resist an affinity with the seemingly impossible

Having lived, despite tears for various fears haunting us daily,
remains nature and human nature’s enduring legacy

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022

[Note: A reader has emailed to criticise the blog and poems for my often repeating myself (in both). Well, apologies if any readers find it irritating; it is partly down to growing old, I guess, but - as my mother often used to say, anything worth saying has to be worth repeating...?] RT