Journey to Ixtlan

The poem “Chapters” was another waking from sleep inspiration. If your life were a book, could you remember the majority of what's been written?


Chapters

Chapters passed years ago, important while they were lived.
They center of my life, now hazy memories of time past.
There are hints of where I've been, the pictures of both people and place.
In the end they are left behind, the book of life ever written on.

Hidden words are out of reach, pages known but then not seen.
The years have passed, this is true, but what did happen is unclear.
Was it written in a secret ink, or in a code no longer known?
The reasons for the void are unclear, where are the chapters I could read?

Bookmarks through photos old, images show where paths were walked.
The groves are lost to weeds, memories vague where we once played.
Images show the ones we loved, perhaps the souls now lost to time.
Words fail the pictures seen, memories lost as tears flow.

The chapters continue on, written as the days pass days.
Weeks follow the months, leading to the years.
The wheel turns as script notate on the pages of a life full lived.
I wish I could fully read the chapters that came before.

© 2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20160306.

The writing of “Edge of Me” began with the thought 'would time stand still if I live half a life?”. Time does not stand still. It moves on even if we don't.


Edge of Me
Bonus Poem for Day 145 – 20150525

Time is a constant, warped by the self,
slowing or speeding by will of the self.
Would time stand still if I lived half a life,
measured by the glimpses of enjoyment passing?

Walking in circles, paths worn in the dust,
diversions fleeting as ground passes by.
Ghosts of the past live in the life of now,
warning that I should ask once again.

Does time speed by with chances not taken,
racing forward with so much yet to be done?
The distance holds steady, life blurs past,
I shuffle forward as time asks its price.

People not treasured, events not grasped,
what would my world be if I awoke?
Time is a constant, but I am not so,
life is to be lived even if I don't.

© 2015. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved

This is a WAG, a Wide Area Generalization. Nuff said!

I've witnessed what I perceived to be very reactive remarks on public LJ blogs. At first I thought it was an aberration, but this happened over and over. Who will respond, and how they will respond, has become predictable. Those with elder status had the most predictably pointed remarks. They have years of experience teaching, leading worship, and generally being spiritual mentors. What's the deal? I got a clue today in one of my computer industry trade journals. The column 'Technically Speaking", in the December 2006 'Better Software' magazine, was titled "Believing is Seeing". The column was about "On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm", a psychological study on the nature of perception that was done in 1949 by Jerome S. Bruner and Leo J. Postman.

As presented in the column, Gary Jaron summarized the study's findings as follows:

"Beliefs have the power to affect the mind's ability to accurately interpret incoming sense data. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the convictions, the more resistant those beliefs will be to challenged by incoming sense data of any kind. Those strongly held beliefs will fight off any incoming data that appears to, and attempts to, contradict those prior beliefs."

Do years of experience contribute to a purely reactive response, irresponsible of the quality of the incoming data? It is an incredible irony that experience can lead to intolerance by blindness, lack of compromise by deafness, and belligerence by rigid assuredness. Is this inevitable? Do all those with years of experience led to this trap? I don't know.

How can this trap be corrected if it does happen? More often than not, there is some event in the person's life that informs them that data does have different interpretations. Perhaps this occurred because of a reactive response towards them. Whatever the reason, and no matter how painful it may be, (IMO) it is good to be broken from the illusion of our fixed convictions.

It is better that none of us come to this end. Nobody has all the answers or can even pretend to. Why do so? I suppose we are human. Still, I hope this is not an inevitable conclusion to years of service.

Is this a WAG? Is there another explanation to what I've seen???