Starting Anew - A Poem

This started as a reflection on standing alone today - quite contentedly -  amidst a crowd of young first-year students, but as with many poems, the direction it took was not exactly what the would-be poet had planned.  

Starting Anew

Alone - knowing myself,

Yet surrounded by others unknown;

At peace in the knowledge of what is right,

Yet anxious about steps taken;

Calm with steadiness in the depths,

Yet troubled on levels unknown.

How can such opposites hold together

without tearing apart the whole?

What is the glue which binds

such disparate truthes in stable tension?

It is my humanity

–a bundle of paradoxes parading as oneness.

It is my humanity

– conflicting compasses in a sea of chaos.

Being human, I hold such tensions 

And maintain such confusion –

Secure in insecurity and doubt,

Joyful in sorrow and sadness,

Peaceful in conflict and uncertainty,

At home in homelessness and exile,

A stranger even among friends and family

This, this bag of uncertainties and confusions –

Like grab-bags of treasures and relics in a shop –

This is to be fully alive. This is to be completely real.

This is true life

Unknowable, unpredictable, uncertain,

yet promise-filled.

This is true life

Knowing incomprehensibly that in the end

– and after –

it will make sense.