When I posted the poem about loving-kindness meditation (or the lack thereof), I’d really been noticing a spectacular failure in that department. A day after I posted it, an old high school friend sent me a picture of us on a date from back then. And no, she doesn’t even know about this blog, so it was coincidence (or was it?)
Which means, yes, this is an old high school GIRL friend, but we’re friends now. Our respective spouses have nothing to fear. We are fortunate to have arrived at that place where we can just laugh at our 16 and 17 year old selves, dressed like refugees from Duran Duran, and to just both love the kids we were. In fact, it’s like looking at your own children.
And this also inspired me to look at some old pictures of my own – our parents looking shockingly like ourselves (now) at our wedding.
This can cause you to feel maudlin about aging, or it can cause you to see that everything goes in a circle, and that moments are all we really have. We tell ourselves a lot of stories that aren’t true, and what seems important at the time often isn’t (and vice-versa).
So these ridiculous pictures caused me to feel loving-kindness to my teenage self, and a very nice girl who has become a very good teacher, wife and mother. Even better, closing up the box of pictures and stepping back into the home I have in the present with my own wife and sons, there is no “now” I’d rather be in than this one.
This may turn into poetry later, but tonight I don’t feel like speaking in parables.
poetrytech 
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