If …

Since Easter, I have been spending time doing some self-reflection, not least because I spent two wonderful weeks on the island of Iona. Here is a poem I wrote during that time of reflection. (With apologies to Rudyard Kipling for using his title – but we are writing in different times, so my poem is very different.)

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‘If I had my time again,

I’d do things differently.’

Or so I’d like to think.

But – we want our time again

Knowing then what we know now

About ourselves. We’d go back

Forearmed with information over

What was a mistake – and what was not.

Knowing which mistakes mattered.

And, which (in the end) did not.

There is another thing – if we

Go back, has everyone else ‘gone back’ too?

The bullies, the ‘uncaring’ parents, the siblings

Lost in their own cares and woes:

Will they know what they are doing, second time around?

We all get one chance at life:

Life is lived forwards, but recalled backwards.

Our mistakes, our traumas, take lives of their own

(Often living largest in our minds)

Affecting future generations.

The trick, I suppose, is to try

To gain enough self-knowledge

That we do not pass on the results of our traumas,

Onto those coming after us – there should be no repeats.

Let the trauma end with me.