The what-ifs of life are a perennial enigma, a source of continual fascination.
What touches us does change us, what passes by always leaves it’s fragrance. The possibility of the butterfly effect - where everything changes at the flutter of a butterfly’s wings - and the intrigue of the sliding doors - what if the metro you were running for slides shut just when you got to it. Would your life be different if you’d reached a destination earlier? What if the delay caused made you to meet someone you connected at an immediate subliminal level?...
The what-ifs of life are a perennial enigma, a source of continual fascination.
What touches us does change us, what passes by always leaves it’s fragrance. The possibility of the butterfly effect - where everything changes at the flutter of a butterfly’s wings - and the intrigue of the sliding doors - what if the metro you were running for slides shut just when you got to it. Would your life be different if you’d reached a destination earlier? What if the delay caused made you to meet someone you connected at an immediate subliminal level?
Everything is speculation - but everything ELSE looks so much more promising and enticing.
Our choices, governed ostensibly by our thinking, are often themselves progeny of chance. I remember Tom Tykwer’s immensely philosophical and fascinating Run Lola Run, where Lola’s minutest action changed her fortune and those of everyone her life touched.
So is there a lesson in all of this for us? For love? For life? Possibly there is. Does it seem to say that life is not in the passive acceptance of what destiny throws at us, as if it’s an inevitability, but in an intense striving which then results in inevitabilities. For then it is time to be at peace with what one gets.
But much more than anything in our lives, the thing which is most difficult to accept is to know when to stop spinning and to stop and gaze at the beauty of bustling flowers. And to fall in love with what one inevitably has.
The adequacy of love is a perpetual quibble. There is nothing which satiates. Everything is an imbalance, everything is a quest. We mourn the absences in the person deigned for us. We hate the design of our fortune which keeps us out of introductions and charmed circles. Within that disfigured womb of our expectations, we have to work out the contours of beauty if we have to maintain our sanity and find the stunning fulfilment which minutiae could confer, if only we had the eyes to see it.
We would then be new people, happy to say - let everything be, let it be.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love's rocky terrain -
- Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave)
- He Made Lasagna Before He Left
- The Final Goodbye (Or Why Lovers Decide To Die Together)
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Imagefilm 015 by Sascha Ende
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/296-imagefilm-015
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Mellow Sweet Traditional Piano by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8885-mellow-sweet-traditional-piano
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
Sad Cinematic Background by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9230-sad-cinematic-background
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
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