Been here before?

Firstly apologies for the length of time it’s taken me to post something new here….life has been busy.

I found this Rabindranath Tagore poem today...

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.


It’s beautiful but it also made me think about the notion of reincarnation and our souls going on…Despite being brought up in a very strict religious community (that makes it sound quite terrifying…but then nuns can be…) I no longer consider myself of be someone of Faith, as such. I love the idea of reincarnation, Heaven, the Afterlife all of that, but I can’t really get it to square with science…and to my mind that’s the real nature of Faith – a willingness to set aside all that is known and simply believe in the unknown…I guess I’m too much of a coward to just give in and believe…I need hard evidence. Anyway, this poem added to that – I can’t say that I have experienced just what Tagore is talking about here – I would truly love to meet someone and believe that we had been together before, and were destined to always in each life, meet again and remain friends and lovers. But I can’t believe that. Each person I meet is so new to me, and those who I might have thought I had a deep connection to at some point, always manage to surprise me and therefore convince me that we, or maybe just I, don’t ever really know anyone….
One of my favourite pastimes (aside from people watching) is talking about what has happened – I love to chew over conversations I’ve had with people and will spend hours talking to my closest friends about what this or that remark really meant…as everyone of course has a sub-text….No one ever just says what they mean (apart from me, of course). So many happy hours are passed deciphering just what He really meant when He said that….Now surely if I’d known them in a previous life all of that would be unnecessary, as I would already know exactly what they meant, wouldn’t I?
But then again, just because I’ve not experienced what Tagore is talking about, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…For example, I’ve never been to see the Pyramids, but I know they exist….So maybe if there is such a thing as the Afterlife or Reincarnation, maybe some of us are just very young souls and haven’t clocked up the necessary man-hours to know our soul mates when we see them…or maybe we just haven’t met them yet.

Endings, Beginnings and Quantum Physics

Some of you may know that I’m really quite interested in Quantum Physics (stop laughing at the back there!) I know and understand very little of it but it still fascinates me…Schroedinger’s cat and all that…The whole idea of time and how that is constructed also intrigues me: is it linear? It appears that way to us – a whole series of Now, one moment after the other, the past behind us and the future ahead. Or is it like a piece of string rolled up in a ball – so still one thing after another but at the same time parts of the string could be laying next to other sections – thus bits of time would be alongside each other….Absolutely mind boggling stuff.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to talk about today was about endings and beginnings….Throughout life we reach the end of things – end of school, end of childhood, end of student days, and so on. Each ending is approached with either joy or apprehension – Hooray, school is over! Or, Erm, I’m not longer a student – what do I do now? Each ending signifies, naturally, a new beginning.

Beginnings are by their very nature, full of promise, full of new things, new possibilities, new opportunities. As we’re approaching Easter and Springtime it’s entirely appropriate to think about new beginnings and new life, blah, blah, blah…You know the whole thing….

But back to Quantum Physics….what if the beginning isn’t….what if you’ve done it all before anyway? Would you, or could you even, do it the same way again? I wouldn’t.

Next time around (if there is a next time, and not being either Hindu, Buddhist or a particular believer in the After Life and all that, I’m not sure there will be a next time, but for the sake of argument). Next time around I will please myself first and foremost – Katherine Hepburn said that apparently – always do what you want to do – that way at least one person will be happy. Wise woman.

Next time I’m going to learn to climb when I’m in my teens. I’m going to a big industrialised city to study. I’ll run away with a circus. I’ll dye my hair, never have it cut. And I will have written at least five novels by the time I’m thirty.

Do I want to do any of those now? Not particularly. But just imagine the stories I’d have if I had done those things…..