15/03/2022
LIFE: THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
You will emerge, bloody, broken,
bruised, but alive.
They will tell you you're on a planet called Earth.
They will give you a name.
Somebody else's name.
They will teach you what they think is true.
You will speak a particular language,
not of your choosing.
You will be taught their beliefs,
values, codes of conduct.
(Don't take these as absolute truth,
it's just their version of truth.)
They will praise you or blame you.
Support you or not.
The will give you gifts or take gifts away.
They will call you good, the best, wonderful, a genius, their saviour.
They will call you bad, wrong, bad, selfish, evil.
Don't buy into their names, their judgements, good or bad.
You are alive.
You cannot be contained or controlled.
Or defined by words.
You will love and lose love.
Your heart will break, often.
You will touch the greatest ecstasy,
the depths of melancholy.
Those you love will die.
You will question your reality.
You will sometimes feel that you cannot go on. You will go on.
You will wonder about your purpose.
Find a purpose, lose it.
Inhabit a role, shed it.
Trust someone, and the trust will be broken.
Or will remain unbroken.
Or you will fall to your knees.
And stand. And fall. And stand again.
And keep going.
You will taste all of life, the dark and the light.
All of life will surge through you,
the joy and the sorrow,
the boredom and the bliss,
the certainty and the doubt,
great excitements and the terrors of the deep.
You will touch others, and be touched in return.
You will dance and sing and crumble in despair.
You will weep and laugh and fall into the Mystery.
And in the end you will cry out:
I HAVE LIVED!
I HAVE LIVED!
- Jeff Foster
