Stopping

Sometimes it is the right thing to go backwards.
To remember you were at your happiest,
the places your friends would not recognize,
where you were less efficient, more joyful,
where time dissolves and somehow ceases to matter
and you find the place where you strayed.

You stray more than most. Everything is interesting.
Everything feels possible. You are efficient.
Your wife tells you so, but with that efficiency
comes a danger, that you are so sure of yourself
that you believe everything is a sideshow
and easily accomplished.

One after the other until so much is done,
and what is left of you is unrecognizable.
Once or twice you have been so lost
you barely recognized who and what you were.

And so, you stop.

Anywhere. Just stop. Sit down.
Have a cup of coffee. A glass of wine.
Sit in the sun. Think. Wait.
A bit of prayer. You become
the opposite of efficient,
a being of feelings and thought,
eventually losing even the thought.
Emptying yourself.

When you were young, you stopped only
the moment after the collapse.
It was not, I was not either efficient
or myself. There was no path.
you wandered in the wilderness,
like a lost Moses. You stumbled more than walked,
years of trial and error and the love of people
whose love you never earned.

You are not so foolish now.
Now you stop more often. On purpose.
Having refound yourself, you are loath to let go,
to wander too far off the path.
You are prone to silences. You seek them,
more than that, you create them,
even in the midst of crowds you sit
still, quiet, looking forward,
looking back, listening more to your soul
than the world around you.

The traveling has broken you
and yet you have learned that the walking wounded
still walk.

And so, once again, you sit. Your body here.
Your mind and heart in the places that make you whole.
Inefficent as hell, and glad for it.

About this poem

My wife constantly tells me I am efficient. Most of the people have I worked for or with have said the same thing.

I suppose I am. I have always been able to get more work done in a shorter period of time than the people around me. I have always assumed it was a focus thing. When I work on things, I get lost in the work.

But in my heart of heart I am anything but efficient. I like to stare into space. Lose my self in the moment and place. Stop and let my emotions catch up with me. Watch people. I have lost that ability a time or two in my life, living for the efficiency of doing more and more. It did not work out well for me. I have had a collapse or two.

I have learned the art of being myself, inefficiencies and all and have learned the wisdom of allowing myself to step back sometimes when life is pulling me from my heart. I wish I had learned it earlier, but it was, for all the mess and collapses and restorations, been worth it to learn to live the lesson. Which leaves me grateful for the messiness. And grateful for a faithful God who never abandoned me on the journey.

The picture of of a trattitora in Venice, Italy.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom