I
THE BATTLES IN OUR HEAD
Paul said things work together for good
when we take shelter within God's refuge.
But as rain falls on the just and unjust
our resolve can be crushed by the deluge.
Most of us try to stay decent and true
and live as if meaning still matters;
even as persistent devaluation
ensure our values end up in tatters.
Purpose that once sprung eternal from
and gave us futures that stretched out far,
unravel and unwind before the chaos
and hope limps back to Pandora's jar.
History has delivered life and health
with markers that have improved one way.
But now we have time to gaze at our navels
we waste seconds on the clock of life's day.
With these positive has come mental illness,
growing addictions, and intimate violence.
Our simultaneous emotional growth
seems shunted by the descent of silence.
So we plough on, clench our jaw, and sigh,
then pray there's nowhere further to fall.
We reach for salvation in something or someone,
and presume fairness will be there for all.
There are now battles going on inside our heads,
that have become expert at telling us lies.
Our pampered lives appear to sap volition,
and we’re unable to give reasons why.
By intention or accident, probably the latter,
we struggle for a psychological hold.
Yet we still possess freedom to say yes or no,
in spite of what, and by whom, we've been told.
We must drop anchor, and ask tough questions,
like why we feel that we carry a curse?
Because when it all seems too much for one,
the truth is 'it can always be worse!'
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II
REASON and EMOTION
Now the quantum and the classical co-exist in physics,
so in our mind do emotions and reason.
And just like the wolves in the Cherokee legend
strength is given to the one we spend feed on.
Cognition performs like the voice of balance,
and emotions like a child at play.
Feelings can lead to pleasure and excitement,
as reason can explain them away.
For the individual it comes down to motivation,
or the one inside us we'd like to think true.
There will be times when tears are our one recourse,
and also times when only reason will do.
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III
NATURE VERSES NURTURE
Life’s trajectory is launched and we have no say
of propensities to things physical or mental.
Or what standard deviations we are from the mean
on the measures that are deemed elemental?
What will be the quality of our initial attachment,
the skills of our carers to guide and protect?
We have no control if we're oppressed or liberated,
live in poverty, or with prosperity and respect.
What will be our gender, IQ, or body shape,
will we be authentic, sensitive, or a caricature?
Which skin colour, temperament, or intellect
will be our gifts from both nature and nurture?
There are billions with percentiles to the right of the curve,
that are blessed with the luck of socialisation.
Just as there are numbers at the other end,
whose life's value has a null calibration.
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IV
THE SELF SERVING BIAS
It's said that 'The past is a foreign country,
[and that] they do things differently there.'
Yet it is in our face with its vivid old movies
that we know well, but never wish to share.
We can observe, remember, cringe, or understand
from cause and effect to didactic indifference.
For life doesn't judge our honest mistakes,
though the consequences can seem like a sentence.
Then flying in the face of these obvious facts,
we believe our biased take on reality.
We claim ownership of all our success and gains,
while failures are from luck, fate or calamity.
The unpleasant but reverse idea that the wins
are the consequence of lucky interaction,
and the losses come from our poor choices,
is a mindset that struggles for traction.
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V
THE ALCHEMY OF RESILIENCE
At times this is a cold and lonely place,
where goodness survives, but only after a fashion.
Yet alongside this growth in understanding pain
we create care, respect, and compassion.
Now if I accept my brother is a child of God
with a divinity that is precious and profound.
When I'm asked to love my neighbour as myself
what was once foreign can get turned around.
This revolution of mercy can blunt our rage,
and locate Trojans we've struggled to trace.
Forgiveness dilutes and diffuses our guilt,
and simultaneously infuses us with grace.
Ego becomes the enemy, pretence our Devil,
with self-absorption the reverse of solutions.
But where hides this love for us and our fellows?
It's lurking within the rubble of our misfortunes.
When we realise we inhabit structures we’ve made,
we can see patterns amid our reflections.
If we codify, memorise, and map their size,
we can adhere to their ongoing corrections.
I came to see that what I built was ok,
although in reality I'd been knocking it all down,
but without knowing what I was doing at the time,
I had made the one thing that was truly my own.
I now choose who lifts me from the abyss,
with my free will and ethical choices.
Chaos sparks creation in my body of defeat,
when a Greater Mind marks my inner voices.
Sometimes we have to know a lot of failure
to find that love that makes spring from a fall.
Mercy for all is the heart’s true elixir -
the alchemy of rebound inside of us all.
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VI
PARADISE REGAINED
Here resides our potential courage,
along with recognition of our dogged persistence.
The knowledge we collect along this way
can be green shoots from seeds of resilience.
What we have lived out has been mostly learned,
formed in vessels of Pavlovian reactivity.
Blind materialism is only instinct however,
and we are much more than mere hopeless tenacity.
This new belief may become a bell-chamber rope,
with tolling that's much more than just sound.
Our words are no longer the 'murmur of gnats’,
as reality no longer weighs us down.
Sometime in the garden a tree will fall
to a the sound of one hand in pain.
Whether this marks the end of a trifle, or a trial,
what was lost can be “Paradise Regained.”
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