Today I just want to share a powerful and profound short poem by Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012). It comes from her book Map: Collected and Last Poems. I came across it on www.brainpickings.org, one of my favorite websites. Read it twice if you can. The last two lines are particularly striking, in the context of the poem, and of our lives. I do grieve for some of what I will forever have done. Perhaps you do, too. But there is an alchemy that can redeem and reweave even our worst into a different and never expected best.
LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT
Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.
