The Poem We Are Already Living

I used to think poetry was something written on a page.

Words arranged carefully.

Lines broken in particular places.

Metaphors.

Rhymes.

Images.

When I was in teacher training one of our assignments was to go into the forest and create a poem. Doing that  began to understand that poetry doesn't necessarily begin with words.

Sometimes it begins with noticing.

A branch

A sunrise.

A child's laugh.

An old photograph.

The smell of the pines

The smell of bread coming from a kitchen.

Two people holding hands after sixty years together.

A man sitting alone on a park bench watching leaves fall.

A woman laughing so hard that she forgets to be embarrassed.

Maybe poetry is what happens when we stop rushing past these things.

We talk about poetry as though it is something we need to understand.

We analyze it.

We explain it.

We ask what the poet meant.

But there are some poems that become smaller when we explain them.

The same thing happens with life.

We want to understand everything.

Why did this happen?

Why did that person leave?

Why did I get sick?

Why didn't that dream work out?

Why did something wonderful happen when I wasn't expecting it?

We spend years trying to answer questions that may not have answers.

Then one day, usually when we are no longer looking for them, we notice something.

Perhaps the question wasn't the point.

The experience was.

I think about this when walking through a forest.

There is no explanation for a particular shaft of sunlight falling through the trees.

It simply happens.

There is no committee meeting deciding which bird should sing next.

There is no master schedule telling the leaves when to turn.

Everything is unfolding.

And we are unfolding with it.

That may be one of the hardest things about getting older.

We become very aware of how much we have lost.

People.

Places.

Opportunities.

Strength.

Dreams.

Versions of ourselves.

We can spend a great deal of time looking backward and wondering how things might have been different.

But perhaps the forest offers another lesson.

A tree doesn't spend the autumn arguing with the summer.

It lets go.

The leaf falls.

The branch remains.

And eventually, spring arrives in a form the tree has never experienced before.

There is something deeply poetic about that.

Our lives are full of endings that become beginnings.

Retirement ends one chapter.

Grandparenthood begins another.

A move changes our relationship with a familiar place.

A health challenge changes what we thought was possible.

Losing someone changes us forever.

None of these experiences are simple.

But neither are they the whole story.

We are always becoming.

That doesn't mean everything gets better.

It means everything keeps changing.

And somewhere in that change is the possibility of wonder.

I have learned that wonder requires a shift in attention.

You can walk through the same park every day and see the same trees.

Or you can suddenly notice that one of them has a nest you had never seen before.

The park hasn't changed.

You have.

That may be what poetry asks of us.

Look again.

Listen again.

Slow down.

Notice.

The poem may already be there.

It may be in the face of the person sitting across the breakfast table.

It may be in the hand of a grandchild reaching for yours.

It may be in the friend who calls when you didn't expect anyone to call.

It may be in the quiet after the rain.

It may even be in the difficult parts of life.

We don't have to like every line.

We don't have to understand every stanza.

But we are living the poem.

And perhaps the essence of poetry is not finding the perfect words for life.

Perhaps it is learning to pay attention to the life we already have.

When Music Stops Being Something We Hear

There is a point in listening to music when something changes.

At first, you are listening to a song.

You notice the words. You hear the instruments. You recognize the melody. Perhaps it reminds you of a person or a place or a particular time in your life.

Then, sometimes, something happens.

You stop listening to the music.

You become part of it.

I have always been fascinated by that moment.

We spend an enormous amount of time talking about music. We discuss singers, composers, lyrics, rhythm and technique. We decide what is beautiful and what isn't. We make lists of our favourite songs.

But none of that is actually the music.

It is our attempt to describe the experience.

Music itself is something else.

You cannot hold it.

You cannot put it on a shelf.

You cannot put your favourite song in a bottle and save it for a rainy Tuesday twenty years from now.

You can record it, of course.

But the recording isn't the experience.

The experience happens between the sound and the listener.

Perhaps that is why the same song can mean completely different things at different points in our lives.

A song we barely noticed at 20 can bring tears at 70.

A song that once reminded us of falling in love can later remind us of someone we have lost.

The notes haven't changed.

We have.

And suddenly the music seems to know something about us that we didn't know ourselves.

I think that is one of the great mysteries of music.

It can make the boundary between the individual and the world become wonderfully thin.

Think about sitting in a concert hall.

Hundreds of people are sitting around you.

You don't know most of them.

Yet when the music begins, everyone is listening to the same thing.

For a few minutes, individual concerns disappear.

Nobody is thinking about the grocery list.

Nobody is worrying about whether the lawn needs cutting.

Nobody is wondering whether they sent that email.

We are simply there.

Listening.

Breathing.

Feeling.

The music has gathered us into one experience.

Something similar happens when we hear a song from our youth.

Suddenly we are not 80 anymore.

For a few minutes, we are sitting in a car at 18.

We are dancing with someone we loved.

We are driving home from school.

We are hearing a song for the first time.

Memory has its own orchestra.

Sometimes one note is enough to bring the whole thing back.

And yet we still try to explain music.

We ask, "What does this song mean?"

Sometimes I wonder if that is the wrong question.

Perhaps the better question is, "What does this song make possible?"

Music makes memory possible.

Connection.

Emotion.

Silence.

Movement.

Sometimes even healing.

But like the forest, music reminds us that nothing can be held forever.

The last note arrives.

Then it disappears.

And the silence that follows is part of the music too.

We may wish we could hold that final note in place.

We cannot.

It has to go.

Perhaps that is why music can teach us something about life.

We don't get to keep every beautiful moment.

We get to experience it.

We get to be changed by it.

Then we let it go.

The music ends.

But something remains.

Not the sound itself.

Something inside us.

And maybe that is the essence of music.

Not what we hear.

But what happens to us while we are listening.

The Essence of Things

There are some things in life we spend far too much time talking about.

We talk about happiness. We talk about love. We talk about what makes a good life. We talk about poetry, music, and wonder. We read books about them, listen to people explain them, and sometimes spend years trying to understand what they mean.

But talking about something and experiencing it are two very different things.

I have discovered that when I spend too much time trying to understand something, I am often standing outside of it.

When that happens, I like to go for a walk in the forest or through a park.

There is something about being among trees that changes the way I think. The forest doesn't hurry. It doesn't check the clock. It doesn't seem particularly interested in my schedule.

A tree doesn't look at its watch and say, "I should have grown another three feet by now."

The forest operates on a different scale.

Human time is measured in minutes, hours, birthdays and anniversaries. Forest time is measured in seasons, rings, generations and centuries. Somewhere beneath our feet, the earth is working on an even larger clock.

And suddenly my problems seem a little smaller.

Not unimportant. Just smaller.

I begin to notice things I wasn't noticing before.

A shaft of sunlight moving across the forest floor.

The sound of wind moving through branches.

A fallen tree already becoming home to insects, fungi and new growth.

A bird singing somewhere I cannot see.

Nothing is standing still.

Everything is changing.

Everything is becoming something else.

The fallen tree isn't simply dead. It is becoming part of the forest.

The leaf isn't simply falling. It is returning.

The seed isn't simply buried. It is waiting.

The forest doesn't seem troubled by impermanence. It has built its entire existence around it.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons we find hardest to learn.

We want things to last.

We want the good day to continue. We want the person we love to remain beside us. We want our children to stay young. We want our bodies to remain strong. We want a beautiful moment to remain beautiful forever.

When something wonderful happens, we want to put our arms around it.

Better yet, we want to put it in a bottle.

Label it.

Store it somewhere safe.

But life doesn't work that way.

The moment we try to hold on to something, it has already begun to change.

And perhaps that isn't a tragedy.

Perhaps it is the point.

When I walk through the forest, I sometimes have what I can only describe as a shift in perspective.

I am no longer simply walking through a collection of trees.

I am part of something.

The boundary between me and the forest becomes a little less certain.

I breathe in what the trees have helped create.

The trees breathe in what I have breathed out.

We are participating in the same exchange.

For a moment, the distinction between "me" and "everything else" becomes wonderfully blurry.

That is when wonder arrives.

Not because I have finally figured everything out.

Quite the opposite.

It arrives when I realize I haven't.

I have completely missed the point.

And somehow, in admitting that, I begin to understand it.

Maybe that is true of music.

Maybe it is true of poetry.

Maybe it is true of love.

Maybe it is even true of happiness.

We spend so much time trying to define these things that we sometimes forget to experience them.

Perhaps the essence of life isn't something we can capture.

Perhaps it is something we enter.

Something we notice.

Something we participate in.

Something we briefly understand before it changes again.

The forest doesn't give me an answer.

It gives me something better.

It gives me another way of seeing.

And sometimes that is enough.

Because we are not standing outside the great mystery of life trying to solve it.

We are already inside it.

We always have been.

The Last Dance: Don't Stop Dreaming

What would you do today if you knew that, very soon, one of your dreams was going to come true?

Would you make a phone call?

Start writing?

Book the trip?

Plant the garden?

Call an old friend?

Take the first step toward something you've been putting off for years?

Or would you simply smile and say, "Well, it's about time!"

There is something powerful about having a dream and showing up for it every day, even when nothing seems to be happening.

Dreams rarely arrive on schedule.

They don't knock on the door and announce, "Today's the day."

Most of the time, they arrive quietly.

One small step.

One conversation.

One page written.

One application submitted.

One phone call made.

One afternoon spent learning something new.

One more attempt after the previous one didn't work.

And then there is another way to pursue a dream.

You can show up for it every day while sauntering through life, winking at the unexpected, laughing at your mistakes and giving out plenty of hugs along the way.

That's when something interesting happens.

You begin to enjoy the journey rather than simply waiting for the destination.

I think that is an especially important lesson as we grow older.

We are often told that retirement is the final phase of life.

The language itself can make it sound like we're approaching the end of a journey and should settle down, put our feet up and wait for the credits to roll.

I'm not buying it.

I prefer to think of our later years as the last dance.

Not the last dance because life is necessarily about to end, but because we have reached the part of the dance where we know the music, understand the rhythm and have finally learned that we don't have to perform for anybody.

We can dance our own dance.

For many of us, our younger years were filled with obligations.

Get an education.

Get a job.

Raise a family.

Pay the mortgage.

Build a career.

Save for retirement.

There was always something next.

Then one day we retired, and somebody handed us the strange gift of something we hadn't had enough of for decades:

Time.

At first, that can feel wonderful.

Then it can feel a little frightening.

Because once the obligations disappear, we have to answer a question we may have been avoiding for years:

What do I want now?

That's where dreams come back into the picture.

Perhaps you still have one.

Maybe you've always wanted to write the book.

Travel somewhere you've never been.

Learn to paint.

Play music.

Build something.

Volunteer for a cause you care about.

Reconnect with an old friend.

Spend more time with your grandchildren.

Start a business.

Teach someone what you know.

Or perhaps your dream is much simpler.

Maybe you want to wake up tomorrow morning and have a reason to get out of bed.

There is no minimum age for dreaming.

And there is no expiration date on curiosity.

So, imagine, just for a moment, that you knew for certain that one of your dreams was going to come true.

What would you do today to prepare for it?

Do that.

How would you celebrate?

Start celebrating.

Who would you tell?

Write them a note.

You don't even have to mail it yet.

Why would you be grateful?

Say it out loud.

Who helped you along the way?

Thank them.

And who could you help achieve something they still dream about?

Help them now.

That last question may be the most important one.

Because as we get older, our dreams don't have to be entirely about ourselves.

We have accumulated something incredibly valuable: experience.

We have made mistakes.

We have recovered from disappointments.

We have learned things the hard way.

We have discovered what matters and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn't.

Why keep all that wisdom locked inside our heads?

Pass it along.

Help someone write their first book.

Encourage the person who is afraid to start over.

Teach a grandchild something you know.

Invite someone who is lonely for coffee.

Tell a younger person about a mistake you made and what you learned from it.

Give somebody permission to dream bigger.

That may be part of the magic of the last dance.

You aren't dancing alone.

You are carrying people with you.

And maybe that's why we shouldn't spend our later years simply looking backward.

The past deserves to be remembered, celebrated and sometimes even laughed about.

But the past isn't where tomorrow lives.

Tomorrow is still waiting.

There are still people you haven't met.

Places you haven't seen.

Books you haven't read.

Stories you haven't written.

Meals you haven't shared.

Hugs you haven't given.

And dreams you haven't chased.

So don't wait for everything to be perfect before you begin.

Show up.

Take the step.

Make the call.

Write the page.

Buy the ticket.

Plant the seed.

Ask the question.

Say yes.

And while you're doing it, saunter a little.

Wink at life.

Laugh when things don't go according to plan.

Give out hugs.

Celebrate the small victories.

Help someone else along the way.

Because perhaps the secret isn't getting every dream to come true.

Perhaps the secret is loving the process of becoming the person who is still capable of dreaming.

And when the music eventually slows, I hope we can look back and say:

"I didn't spend my final dance sitting on the sidelines.

I got out there.

I danced.

I dreamed.

I loved.

I helped.

And I enjoyed the music while it was playing."

So, what dream is still waiting for you?

Maybe it's time to show up for it.

The music is playing.

Let's dance.