Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Happiness Elusive


Sproat Lake photo from 

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.
Kahlil Gibran

The past was built on dreams, a hoped-for future that would be everything the present was not. And then the future arrived, and it was so much less than she had dreamed. Heartache, and wondering: why was what everyone else found so easily denied to her? The lesson, she discovered at mid-life, was learning to be all right alone, to stop waiting, to make her own dream come true. And so she did. Then that dream, too, was withdrawn, and she was cast up once again on the shores of Not-Enough, expected to find a sufficiency there. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow merge in the fulfillment of a life that was only once, for ten golden years, truly fulfilled. 

where is the golden beauty I've been seeking?
happiness elusive,
all my dreams are sleeping.

for Bjorn's prompt at dVerse Poets Pub: to write a haibun from a Gibran quote. I chose the one above. The haiku are lines I wrote when I was very young, in my teens, and which I remembered as I read Gibran's words.

16 comments:

  1. You know, being comfortable with yourself, and not needing someone - or letting that consume you, is an important lesson. Far too many waste life waiting - when they could be living.

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  2. "How sad" was my first thought, but then I remembered how I cherish the memories of my true love lost almost 20 years ago and how lucky I am to have known that love. I think having ten golden years is what fuels this lady's dreams, sleeping or awake. Will I have another love like that? Might the positive solitude return? This poem puts the yearning right out there where it can do some good!

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    1. Yes agree with Susan - I'll add far worse to pretend that there is no golden happiness - far worse to assume that any mediocrity experienced in the now is "reality" as it were always and as it should always be .. the sea awaits ...

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  3. I find this life to be a dream, sometimes a nightmare and sometimes pleasant...we're born to learn through experiences and i agree that happiness is elusive...a thoughtful haibun Sherry...

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  4. I think that you describe the paths of life so very well, the footsteps we are walking and how we have to find new dreams, other goals as we are led into blind-alleys, and across passes... I love how you concluded with those lines from your youth.. it put the whole piece into context.

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  5. What one's dreams are may not be the same as desired. Life is full of alternatives that dreams may just end as hopes without a time frame!

    Hank

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  6. To have known this is a wonderful gift. Many go through life never having known love and happiness.

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  7. There are life's lessons that we are meant to learned, and that may include patience, accepting solitude, working on our dreams, and dreaming on~

    Happiness is relative, I believe ~

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  8. I love the progression here, that covers a lifetime of dreams and disillusions and the acceptance of it all. I think its wonderful to be able to highlight 10 years of happiness and I wonder too what creative fringe benefits have been produced by the yearning for more. I suspect much creative energy is fumed by the dreams that were lived and even those that died. Lovely write Sherry.

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  9. Happiness
    is as happiness
    Does..
    Now
    does
    as Now
    is..


    Now
    is Now..:)

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  10. I hope you get back to what you love sherry-- you write of these things very eloquently. K.

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  11. Oh, wow...Sherry the haiku yo shared is exquisite...you've been wise and beautiful and a gifted writer for your whole life. :)

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  12. I've wondered sometimes if we live with the bar raised too high. Can we expect to be deliriously happy our whole lives? I don't know...maybe just being content with ourselves is a good accomplishment. Got me thinking, Sherry. Always love your writing...

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  13. Oh I loved that you incorporated those lines from your youth into this... Very poignant... It's hard sometimes to give up the dreams that go unfulfilled.

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  14. Happiness for everyone - different, this is a process of reaching the golden bird and meeting the people, (some of them become the friends), along the way...I like 'learning to be all right alone,' - one of the important lessons as we come in this world single and leaving the world in the same way...somehow it's hard to live by your own mind, when everyone show examples 'how it suppose to be'....Beautiful haibun, the life lesson by itself.

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