A Poet's Journal: March 24th, 2014

March 24th, 2014

We find that when we strive after something the true aim is always masked from us, so that even if we set out to attain it very quickly and it is as quickly attained, there is a part which is ulterior and unexpected.  What we are after then, is only another name for what we shall get, and what we take will always be other than what we were given.  But that our lives must run once over and have to watch in others what we have already experienced, gives to age a discerning eye, while those in youth seem to overstep us, or failing this, are content with being blind.  Age does not want youth to experience what we have, it wants it to learn, and puts down its triumphs and defeats as a means for something to strive upon--and how simple and uniform life would be, but how base and groveling each of us!  We do not believe that pain or emptiness can be a liberation, but when we separate and turn inward, it is so.  A motivation arises that was not in us before, that leads to more emptiness and more motivation; feeling them for the first time brings a sudden clarity that only solitude is able to express, and in us, this solitude becomes mature and molds our personality, until somewhere far down the road we seem to attain it as if some long lost secret.

Douglas Thornton