Life Reflections

David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.

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What needs doing now?
To know is to see clearly.
Many messages, one filter, itself a message.

The message plays a tune,
Is a tune.
Can you discern the melody
Amidst competing noises?

You hear the melody or you don't
No music-education course can sharpen your hearing.
Just use the ears found in the message.

Information is nothing special.
We swim in it all the time.
We use it to parse time,
And ourselves,
And ourselves parsing time.

We use information to perceive information,
To define it and manipulate it.
To massage it with itself
And discover ourselves massaging.

My teachers learned through teaching.
So do I
Reality, the Great Teacher, learns, too,
And responds.
Thus I give and take.
But find no balance here.
My taking far outweighs my giving.

Good or bad?
Smart or stupid?
Courageous or cowardly?
I'm not one or the other.
Not both, even.
Just this package
Without shopping labels.
Going, going, gone.

I need not feel good all the time.
Weather keeps changing.
I am storm and calm twilight,
Ice and balmy breeze.
Forecast unpredictable.
Weathering life.

Something wants life to be done well.
Something wants good, honest, purposeful action.
How reassuring!
Although I keep changing, that Something doesn't despair.
Even my thanks to it is thanks to it.

This now-point is new.
So is this one.
So this moment's memories
Are not the memories of this new moment.
I went somewhere
Only to appear here,
And again here.
Even my image of me-then
Is not the same image of me-then now.
Or now.
Sometimes I forget and pretend they are.
Until I look at the details.

Pain gets my attention
And narrows it to a beam
Contracting the world dramatically.
Letting the pain take me altogether
Then attention dilates.
A wider world returns.

There are no gradual changes.
Only instantaneous leaps and increments.
Gradual is the observor's game.
No one is ever partially dead.

My mind sometimes soars,
But not in the sky.
My mind sometimes hears sounds
That are not sound waves,
And sometimes sees things
That aren't out there.”
All minds do so.
So don't try to stick my mind inside my skull.
Brain and mind have merely a casual relationship.

What I do today
Won't change yesterday,
And only appears to change tomorrow.v Who knows?
But what I do today
Is what I do today.

Why I appeared is a mystery.
Why I'm erased in sleep is a puzzle.
Why I'll disappear is another enigma.
Nevertheless, that's how it was
How it is
How it will be.
A greater mystery is how and why I know these mysteries.

Now is just fine for writing poetry
Or taking out the trash
Or mopping up spilled milk.
Yesterday was too early.
The forms weren't there yet.
Tomorrow is too late.
New forms arise then.
“Now or never” has new meaning.

Sometimes I'm here
And sometimes I've gone away.
When I'm gone the stand-ins are
Writing, tennis, sleep,
And a world of Others.
In a strange sense
I'm most myself
When not myself.

You cannot really love a word,
Or believe in a word,
Or worship a word,
Or fear a word.
Perhaps you think that you can.
Walking backwards is not progress.
Step into life.
Don't slide around on words.

Looking back over sixty-five years
Is impossible.
New stories, old stories, all mixed together
And refurbished.
Foolish fabrications.
I-now was never me-then.
Water under the bridge
Already downstream
Just water.

If these words pull you away from Reality
Then I have failed unforgivably.
Sound bytes are tasteless.
Don't word-wrap buds and fallen leaves.
Find something broken and fix it.

“Deciding” is an odd word.
I didn't “decide” to take the cap off the toothpaste this morning.
I just did it.
When I “decide” something
An extra step is necessary.
Extra effort somehow.
Adding “decisions” to life
Makes life more complicated.
Necessary sometimes, perhaps,
But sometimes obstacles to action
In the morning
Just get up.

Borrowed words, borrowed eyes
Borrowed truth.
All yours for the taking.
Unwrap the gifts
With borrowed fingers.

Believe what you will
For the comfort of order and meaning.
Reality keeps appearing to you
Whatever your faith.
No belief
Erases what is.
Though some beliefs
Obscure it.

This body stumbles through time
Faster than this mind.
With the occasional glitch
My mind continues at middle age pace.
Or so I remember now.
The growing discrepancy
Prompts allegiance to my mind alone,
But we're all in this together.

Whatever you think of heaven and hell
Do life well now.
This life won't be repeated
This now can't be deleted
Whatever comes, comes.

s Minds have no sky for sailing,
No earth for grounding.
You can't bend or twist them.
You'll never put your finger on one.
Without spatial coordinates,
Without measurable boundaries
Minds defy scientific study
As customarily practiced.
Psychological and social sciences
Are merely mental mirages.
Whatever such scientists study,
It is not the mind.

Look! You are not dead yet.
Look! Thoughts are born and die.
Where they come from
Where they go
No one knows.
How do you know that truth?
How do you know that you don't know the answer?
Look! You are alive!

For all our hopes and dreams
Life is as it is.
These lines are not news.
But life is news.
Here it comes.
Here it is.

No one live or dies in your place.
No one fields your successes and failures.
No one feels your feelings, thinks your thoughts.
Only you.
Supported by a million hands.
Encouraged by a million circumstances.
Renewed by a million moments.
Up to you ears in unrecognized debt.
Only you.
And me.

I'm singing alone in the forest.
Trees don't evaluate my voice.
Shaded and sheltered
My effort is just enough.
Does the occasional stranger who passes through
Hear the background melody?

The ending

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