A Time of Transition

“Moving Mind”

Consider a mass of low to no velocity.
It’s heavy enough on Earth, and shaped such that
You’d need an athlete of a decent worth
To move it with a decent probability.

The object is uniquely shaped,
And one’s hands must be deftly placed, also
To have the chance to shift or roll the thing
Out from half in the hole in which it sits
Idly outsmarting those who wish and try
To move it not with strength but sensibility.

This mass is not of statue stone
But can, like it, be carved and honed
Into some fitting figure, both discovered and transfigured
By an artist apt and able, on an operation table,
To move mountains of their human mind
And thus Nature’s design enable.

A Good Second Post?

Hey, maybe this project does have some hope! I sat down yesterday to write and the result is this poem that I’m actually quite proud of!

I said in the first post that I’m a complete poetry novice. While I am a poetry novice in that I don’t know much about the poetry “canon” or “how poetry works” on a critical level, this project isn’t my first ever try at writing poems. Over the years, I’ve written many half-baked poem-ish works, and even a few pieces I do consider complete. But I’ve published none of them and scarcely let others read them–I certainly haven’t shared any with a wide audience.

But, again, in the spirit of “eh, why not?”, here I am. :)

Reflection on the Poem

I started writing a long-winded reflection on my poem, but realized it’s better to keep it concise and simple. My poem is about going through big changes in life and dealing with periods of transition. When going through transition periods in life, it can be difficult to regain the “momentum” of new social relationships, new habits and routines, and a new way of life.

Right now, I’m experiencing a period of transition, and I haven’t even started building new momentum yet. I’m just kind of waiting, doing my best until the big changes come and I start my next chapters in life. Without being fully engaged in a big life goal like school, travel, a career, etc. right now, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to be consistently motivated. Not to say I’m not doing anything productive with my time, it’s just that it’s harder without a regular, consistent schedule and pattern to which I can habituate.

While I pass through this transitory period in my life, I remind myself of this passage from Marcus Aurelius:

So there are two reasons to embrace what happens. One is that it’s happening to you. It was prescribed for you, and it pertains to you. The thread was spun long ago, by the oldest cause of all.

The other reason is that what happens to an individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world–of its well-being, its fulfilment, of its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything–anything at all–from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that’s what you’re doing when you complain: hacking and destroying.¹

Everything that happens is a part of Nature’s plan, even if we as parts of the whole don’t fully comprehend the wholistic reasons why the small details and events we encounter in our lives happen the way that they do. Hopefully I’ll be able to explore this Stoic concept more fully in future posts. For now, though, I’ll outsource a deeper explanation to this podcast episode and blog post of Chris Fisher’s: The Religious Nature of Stoicism.

Through the course of writing this poem and post reflecting on it, I’ve realized something interesting. It was much easier for me to convey my exact thoughts and feelings through the poem than it was in prose in this reflection. While harder to understand its exact meaning than from normal writing, the poem is more like a knife, strategically addressing the specific details and themes I wanted to express. These paragraphs of reflection, however, I see more like hammers, because they’re big bulky blocks of text that are larger but less precise. In fact, despite having used several times more words, this reflection hasn’t even explored the entirety of the poem. Interesting.

Also, I thought that maybe sometime I’ll come back and add more content and reflections to past posts. If I do, I’ll indicate and date the added portions. For today, though, this all I have to say.