A Poet's Journal: January 24th, 2014

January 24th, 2014

Arranging our lives into a schedule and setting goals for them is a pleasing venture in itself; our efforts are never so precise and our discipline never so honourable as when we have something to point to, turning our every day activities into an improvement of the self.  Ben Franklin set aside one day a week for study and personal improvement, and advised others to do the same; Coleridge offered three hours a day as fitting to the battle against time; but when we burn up the hours and carve into our days these affairs, the magic disappears; the struggle we once thought honourable now seems vain and doubt leaks into the mind.  Should we make a new schedule and set a new goal it would be just as pleasing, but there is always the lone question that asks us if we are cut out for that sort of life.  Apart from turning us on to patterns and appearances, the mind is far from logical in its understanding, so why then do we try to frame it?  There was a profound sage who said the mind could not be grasped, and whenever we try, it is like walking in to a dark room to pick out a new pair of clothes.

Douglas Thornton