Parallel New Year’s Day - A Time for Personal Reflection, Renewal and Relaxation
Well, we made it to another year.
Congrats! Life is a gift. I'm thankful to be able to have the experience and opportunity this year to work on creating a life.
Goodbye 2021.
Hello 2022.
As New Year’s Day is the first day of the parallel annual holiday calendar, and it is important to focus on renewal and revitalisation rituals today, I have selected a poem from Canadian poet, Edmund Vance Cooke.
It’s called ‘How Did You Die?’.
It reminds me of a few things.
First, death is coming. You can do it stylish and with flare, or gloomy and with a glare (who said poetry is hard?).
Second, you can choose, attitudinally, ’how you die'. You can be as someone accepting, with courage and compassion - or someone who holds back and fails to live.
Third, it is important to be joyful and cheerful in the face of challenge. You can choose to indulge the misery, or you can side with happiness. As Wham t-shirts said, ‘Choose Happy’.
Finally, living authentically and purposefully is key. Living the best way you can, and within circumstances you choose, that’s a great goal.
How Did You Die?
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that!
Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there-that’s disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;
It’s how did you fight-and why?
And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
- Edmund Vance Cooke
Let’s live a great 2022 :-)
Well-wishes to you and hope all your dreams come true.
DB
Dear @Dr.B,
thank you for this beautiful poem, really fitted to be remembered.
N
Dear @Leah D ,
I almost fell of the chair seeing Charles Bukowski's poem! Thank you so much. I have lost hope that anyone actually knows this kind of literature.
As what I see the "books" most read here are the Herald Sun, the Age and the authors most followed are Jay-Z and Beyonce... Apologise to admirers of the aforementioned "books & writers"... (not really, but one has to be polite, right?)
And I always wondered with English, when you put the in front, does it make it more important?
the Nadia : )
Happy New Year Dr. B and supporters. Here is my poetic offering for 2022,
The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you. -- by Charles Bukowski