We look outside for people, places, sensations, and objects to fulfill us, but at the end of the day (or our lives) we will be solely with our selves. So why wait till then to come home to your very own soul?
I told my nephew the other day, when he didn’t want to be alone, to become his own best friend. It’s much more than the self-love trend all over the place right now. We must strip away everything, and come to know ourselves on the most intimate level. The year’s end is the perfect time to go inward and examine all we’ve experienced (bad or good), how we’ve changed, and how our lives are richer for it.
This poem serendipitously came my way and captured the feeling perfectly. It is by a poet named Derek Walcott, and I wanted to share it with you as I wish you a holiday season full of love and wonder.
As he so beautifully says, “feast on your life.”
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
*****
Painting: Still Life with Fruit and Carafe, c. 1610/1620, Pensionante del Saraceni