Ode to Moving On

I’m coming back forward again…
Moving forward, to get to where I was before:
We think we grow, we advance, we achieve,
But really, we stay still, in the same place,
While the world moves around us,
And moves us around. What free will?

Our character will determine our fate.
Our species will determine our character.
Our history will determine our future.
So free; not free; how to be free; what free?
Nothing comes for free. Such is free will.

I’m learning to fight, to defy, to defend…

And how to submit, to crawl away, to appease…
Running to catch up with myself
Learning the skills we were born with,
Advancing back to where we started,
In constant motion, but achieving nothing.

We change no more than the moon or stars

- always returning to last month, or last year
The ceaseless seasons of our lives eternal
Each imprisoned within their own definition
We run, we learn, we grow, but we never change
We cannot escape that which created us. 

Reviews

[Ashesh]

just when we all thought life was infinite parallel lines and we always move fwd; past fades slowly and future unfolds slowly.. You gave us a new perspective-- that we all are stagnant and its the world that revolves. we mistake it thinking its our own motion.haha.
my friend lets hope we could centrifuge ourselves out of this vicious circle of greed, lust, fakeness, illusion.. and every thing that f***s our mind.
a insightful read. thanks for writing it! :)

[dieuxsansculte]

I think we can and do change (as you say, you're learning to fight,) but our progress is so infinitesimally small as to be almost imperceptible. It has always been two steps forward and two steps back until, at some distant point in time, we manage to hold the line and refuse to give up those hard-fought steps forward.

And I really do think that if we are determined enough and fight hard enough and long enough, we can overcome our beginnings and recreate ourselves in a new image.

Then again, I've always leaned slightly toward optimism on the overall scale of things, so I'm probably not the best gauge of what is possible. I still believe in the essential goodness of humanity, and I've been proven wrong too many times for my own comfort.

These are tough questions you're asking here. Questions that have no easy, obvious answers. Only time (and a good portion of luck) might show us what is true.

[Kenneth The Poet]

You've perfectly what I have written about in mathematical terminology. Trigonometry studies the unit circle, and we are limited to shape and going around it endlessly. If you plotted the movements around the circle on a separate graph, you'd see this repeated wave movement, up down up down up down forever and ever to left and to the right. Nice job on summarizing what I feel on a daily basis.

[Sethnicity]

Beautiful the best piece of yours I've read... up to this point. :) But none the less beautiful in all of it's conundrum and humdrum repetitiveness you have brought it to the forfront of my thought and I relate. that is the best we can do untill we've found a way to elevate each other together!
shalom to an Ode.

[Art]

Seems like we are within a cycle of repetition within this life and yet it is like you say we move from the past and are still within it, and when we reach the end we return as well back to our creation and creation again...

[Moonflower]

I have been thinking on this same concept as well. I have always heard that "history repeats itself" and this seems to prove true, over and over again. Not only with the whole of civilization, but with individual lives as well. Interesting and thought provoking piece, as always I enjoyed your personal style and descriptives~Well done.

[Awkward]

WOW!! Incredible! I loved it!

[ice]

This poem displays the study of change,
and Permanence. Budhist thoughts of impermanece came to mind as I read this.
The cyclical nature of things is there, so in effect the poem describes forward and back... reciprocation, and reincarnation.
The first line, sums up human nature nicely:

"I’m coming back forward again…"
An excellent introduction to the text that follows.

I have a little problem with the philosophical context of the poem... being a transcendentalist, been there, done that, now what, kind of a guy;

"Learning the skills we were born with,
Advancing back to where we started,
In constant motion, but achieving nothing."

"but achieving nothing" Is hard for me to swallow..

As "Nothing" in itself is something, it is here , but there,and by that effect everywhere..( Zen thought) Wallace Stevens looked in a snowy woods and saw the nothing that is, and the nothing that isn't. Both were there.

"We run, we learn, we grow, but we never change
We cannot escape that which created us. "

Change is hard because some of us were told that we can not...I believe that concept is based in the ripping away of the magic of the world from us in the toddler stages of our lives..

"Our history will determine our future.
So free; not free; how to be free; what free?
Nothing comes for free. Such is free will."

Yes, especially if the wizard (free will) was torn out of you when you were little.

I thought much the same as what is said in this poem, until about 30 years ago, whenI read "Invictus" and poems by Emerson and the Alcotts.

I enjoyed very much, reading this poem..I don't have to agree fully with content, to respect the art it took to arrange the words.

[Lilly Negoi]

:) "Learning the skills we were born with". Plato believed that all knowledge exists within us, we only have to remember it :). and your poem made me think exactly of that :).