when I was early growing up,
the self-narrative was myopic.
every moment filled
with earnestness
and the possibilities of all out effort.
days were chapters
brimming with attempts and accounts.
there were the onslaught of skills to develop
and endless arrivals of new and different.
the need for engagement
and the hope of excitement prevailed.
at a later stage,
routines became a measure.
expectation was in charge.
self-esteem became engrained
as a working member of the self as team.
wasn’t standing on center stage any more.
duty and core were working operatives.
fulfillment was less than obvious.
there were more rereads in each day.
the self had to have penmanship and grammar.
there was placement and order.
the days still had chapters
but there were vacancies and blurs,
less wanderings and more directives.
the share of views about my self account
as growth became less of a given
and looks became a sense of self as featured.
there were obligations
daily, right out of the blue,
tasks and order and assumed assimilation.
declaration and intendedness became a posture.
as a working member of society,
there was the onrush of details
and noted responsibilities.
it seemed like
all the prepping in the world
had come my way.
days were consumed in catch-up and complete.
assignment, duty and effort
were my personal internal three musketeers.
inner life was much less of now
and the external world was my fill.
I eventually had inner dialogue,
private debates about perspectives
and the chill of the world around me.
I came to have full blown secrets,
a righteous attitude about right and wrong.
I had given up on naivete
and staunchly became professed in belief,
almost card-carrying in a private sort of way.
decades would pass this way.
motivation and mingle would merge.
I had a sense of self
as store front and out back.
a stationary storyline would write of itself,
it seems.
mostly there was a sense of checking boxes,
right and wrong,
hunker down, right the ship at hand,
and fend for oneself
amidst the ongoing of the action.
chapters were more a synopsis as recalled.
life had a storyline
and I was just a character in my memory.
all the props around became sedate.
there were routines into ruts or vice versa.
days now had few highlights and some downers,
more of the spectator and less of the player.
a decade remembered was
a few sentences muttered out loud
and then pondering in return.
the myopia was now watered down.
occasional were the sips.
time that was full blown in earlier life
was now willowy and shedding,
latent in its appeal,
tethered with false hope and resign.
the spark of each day was less worldly.
a sense of accomplishment was an inner ascension
that no one else knew about or really cared.
heart had been the discovered driver.
took decades to make that clear.
and now, a lit candle of devotion
in the privacy of my means.
a day is wondrous, how I never knew
for all of the prattle
and the obviousness of deeds.
they wander around out there.
oh, I am fully aware
but deeply expanded by another means.
it is wondrous to be splayed by life,
only to come to claim existence.
what I now know,
I knew before birth,
but can’t prove its worth in these worldly ways.
I can’t tell you what you don’t know.
it doesn’t work that way.
for ignorance, you are on your own.
but some day, in some way,
we will all agree.
and surrender beyond what agreement gets.
the personage, the personality and the projection,
even the ‘we’ will be dissolved.
as we come down
from the made-up mountain of being,
human, who we be . . .
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