The time....

.... is, of course, now.

"Now is now
I watch I watch
waiting for
no memory"

I wrote that when I was about nine years old. There's more to the poem, and I think I know where my old poetry notebook is at my Dad's house if I wanted to read it again, although that line has always stuck with me. Especially striking is the fact that I wrote it when I was so young.

And yet, I did complete a song I started creating when I was only three and my dad was playing the blues on the piano. He happened to record it, and I have a cassette copy. The rest just recently came to me. I only had one line: Remember what I say today.

Anyway, the point is this: I think we have "it" in us all our lives, and most of us tend to cover it up or push it away, building walls to stand between us all, and building self-doubt, even self-hatred, within us all. Someone asked the Dalai Lama about self-hatred once, and it took a very long exchange of words with his translator to figure out what on earth this person was talking about. It simply is something that is not part of life for him or his people.

Is there an exact moment when people learn to hate themselves, or to tell themselves they are incapable? It seems to me that one cannot both love and hate oneself all at once, truly, and one cannot be in motion and at rest all at once, either. The point is, we are the only ones who can possibly stand in our own way. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

She also said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

I agree with Eleanor. I do not plan to have conversations with her as a certain Presidential candidate once did.

I do, however, plan to follow her sage advice.