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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
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Prompt: “But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
How often do you look back into your life? Does it ever bother you or are you afraid to?
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The past is like my own very special cow, and as a writer and a human I have every right to milk it. Fact is, this metaphor is not mine. I read it in one of the how-to books for writing, but which one I can’t recall. That’s why I can’t tell you the title of that book.
The thing with me is, when I consciously try to look back, not much of the past troubles me or sometimes, depending on my mood-flavor of the day, all or a few of its passages annoy me. So I let the past come up on its own when I am writing, if it so pleases.
Yet, the past is past, and all one can do is to let it be and if possible learn from it, and should there be mistakes, not repeat them.
Still, past is what makes us today. It is as important to us as is the backstory to any writing.
Contemplating on the past is especially important if we feel we have stumbled at some point in our lives. Evaluating the pros and cons of any past behavior takes care of the trial and error problem for the future. In addition, while contemplating, owning up to one’s mistakes helps our growth as a human being, and it is better when this is done without remorse or regret, but as a learning process. After all, to err is human.
Yet, if we deprive ourselves from seeing our own errors, nothing can confuse and compound those mistakes like insisting-- from personal pride--that we never goofed up in the first place. On the other hand, admitting to mistakes shows that we are aware of ourselves and that any one error was not intentional or malicious, and chances are, we won’t repeat the same error.
Surely, some mistakes can be serious or grave; still they, too, provide good lessons for those who are willing to learn from them.
If the misfortunes of one’s life is caused from the outside, say parents or a partner or two or just some unlucky situations, then in such circumstances, our own errors in miscommunication can be evaluated.
I learned and began doing this practice of evaluating the past and pointing out to myself my own input into the events during my forties, so today it feels to me that my past is combed through well. Still, a few scabs from the stab wounds on my back have a way of making themselves known by itching in foul weather; however, the past is past, and human life is not that long.
Thus, nowadays, I’d rather look to what little future is left and let the past be.
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