Friday, June 1, 2018

Are we enough?

Lately, I have been struggling with doing things right on all fronts of my life. I live with a constant guilt, a few actually:
I feel guilty that I don't play enough with my children. I feel guilty that I don't do enough around the house. I feel guilty that as a filmmaker, my work experience, my films are not enough. As a teacher, I feel inadequate most days, despite many encouraging words from my students and coworkers.
There seems to be never enough time for me to do it all or as much as I feel I should. There are times that I fail no matter how hard I try. I have uplifting and inspiring moments but the downs of this roller coaster of life are too many to just sit through.


I came across this article and I find it fitting to my current state. The article is about Tom Hiddleston talking about the one poem that makes him cry and the reasons why.

I admire this man. I use the term admire because I am too old to have a celebrity crush and because my fascination with him has much to do with the way he speaks, his thoughts, his commitment to humanity, to feminism, and to all that is good. He sounds genuinely like a good person, one with struggles of his own, like the rest of us.

"I read this poem often. Once a month at least. In the madness and mayhem of modern life, where every man seems committed to an endless search for approval and esteem of his fellows and peers, no matter what the cost, this poem reminds me of a basic truth: that we are, as we are, ‘enough.’
Most of us are motivated deep down by a sense of insufficiency, a need to be better, stronger, faster; to work harder; to be more committed, more kind, more self-sufficient, more successful. We are driven be a sense that we are not, as we are, ‘enough.’ But this short poem by Derek Walcott is like a declaration of unconditional love. It’s like the embrace of an old friend. We are each of us whole, perfectly imperfect, enough." -TH




Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving at
 your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all
 your life, 
whom you ignored
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


for another, who knows you by heart.

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/04/poem-makes-tom-hiddleston-cry-one