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.

Optimistic Fools

The optimistic fool…I’ve been thinking some more about that since I wrote it earlier…and maybe it’s not such a good thing…

It is easy to end up being taken for granted and generally treated in a rather shoddy way if you are of an easy going and optimistic disposition…

Hmm, this is going to get rather deep, I can see that…Okay, on the one hand it’s got to be better to always see the best in people and to be giving, kind and approachable – I think we all like to see ourselves in this way, certainly that’s how I’d like to think I am…

But the flip side of that is that you do sometimes make excuses for people because you like them and don’t want to see any bad in them – even if they are treating you appallingly – in fact I’d go so far to say that sometimes because of the general laissez faire attitude you end up actively aiding and abetting their bad behaviour – you allow yourself to be treated badly.

But then again, it’s not always your fault that someone is a total pig-headed unpleasant individual who lacks good manners and seems incapable of behaving properly.

I could muse on about this stuff for hours….

And what about when we allow ourselves to be treated badly because we have a misguided notion that if we allow them to do this to us maybe they’ll love us/stay with us/want us. Everyone wants to be loved and some people are not so good at choosing the right person to invest that love in….

And how do you know when you have found the right person to invest in, as it were? Do any of us really know? I guess we just go on faith and hope that we’ve made the right decision – a wing and a prayer…Now that makes me think of one of my favourite films – The Wings of Desire which was then made into the Hollywood version called City of Angels. The story is about an angel who falls in love with a woman and then decides to fall to earth. It’s a beautifully melancholy story and therefore hits all the right buttons when you’re in that sort of mood.