Sit. Feast on your life.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

Derek Walcott’s poem, “Love after Love,” has infiltrated my waking hours. I’m not usually obsessed with a poem, but I desire to learn this 15-line poem by heart. “Love after Love” speaks to the heart, reminding the reader that “the time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here.”

Welcoming myself is my heart’s desire. You know. When you wake up look in the mirror and smile. You smile because you have embraced who you are, your flaws, your strengths, your very being. You welcome yourself to the place where you are right now. And you sit with yourself with elation.

I must ask: when was the last time you welcomed yourself with happiness, joy, and a sense of adventure? “Love after Love” challenges us to look at ourselves in the mirror and “love again the stranger who was your self.” For me, that requires increasing my laughter, playing more, and stopping taking myself so seriously.

Dear readers, “Love after Love” challenges us to “Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.” The stranger can be yourself. The stranger can be God, the Almighty creator. You have to ask yourself, “who knows me by heart.”

Prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it ?” (Jeremiah 17:9). I know the only person who truly understands my heart is God. What about you? I surely don’t always understand my heart. But when I sit and feast on my life with God, it’s a moment of clarity, a time to get to the root of things just as they really are with no pretense.

I realize that when I stop ignoring myself and peel my “image from the mirror,” I love myself for who I am and how I have been shaped and formed. I want to sit and feast on my life.

If you have a moment, read the words of “Love after Love” and sit and feast on your life.