Love after Love

In the madness and mayhem of modern life, where every one seems committed to an endless search for their approval and esteem of peers, of social media 'likes', gratification, cudos, we have to remember that we are 'good enough' as our own person, the person we love.

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 by a sense that we are not, as we are 'enough'

A short poem by Derek Wallcott (1930 - 2017), is like a declaration of unconditional love.

Love After Love

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

for another, who knows you by heart.

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.