With the Benefit of ‘Kindsight’
‘Love After Love’
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. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
I recently came across a new word in a blog from a friend: “kindsight”. This is a play on the word “hindsight” which refers to how we understand something after it has happened, something we look back to in the past. We use “hindsight” often to show disapproval or regret at something we’ve done or said, and wished now, looking back, that we had done or said something different. Or that circumstances had been different. By way of contrast, “kindsight” means to look back on past events and ourselves with kindness, regardless of disappointments, regrets, failures. The shocking beauty of Walcott’s poem is the brazen invitation to offer ourselves hospitality of the sort we would extend to a lover. To “love again the stranger who was your self”. This feels like the right way to enter 2021, and to look back on the 2020 era of covid-19 with “kindsight”.
Some questions to think about after reading the poem:
- How would you describe the hospitality you offer to yourself?
- What stranger in yourself needs to be rediscovered and loved again?
- What might you write in a love letter to yourself?
Robert, Jan 2021
‘Love after Love’ from ‘Collected Poems 1948-1984’ by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott.
Photo by Johannes W on Unsplash
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This poem makes me think of this little clip with Robin Williams. I think he sums it up well with these words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ojkAo0G4_s
Thanks, Boogie 16, for this lovely, moving clip. As Robin Williams life our lives are a mixed bag and we need to make peace with that.
Thanks Robert and Boogie 16 for the thought provoking combination of ideas. There is the invitation to “love the stranger within” and to “live a spectacular life” and then the contrasting reality of depression in William’s case and however the shadow self shows itself in each of us. I am grateful for this Nexus page as it gives me words to better understand the contrast I feel in myself and the stories and images to “feast on my life.”
A beautiful poem and insightful comments…all an invitation to honest and caring self-reflection. In those quiet moments in the early dawn or in the stillness of the moonlit garden, personal reflections can easily take on a gloomy tinge. Gratitude has been key in helping me to check this tendency, turning me toward the affirmation of the beauty of my very essence, the recognition of the many gifts given to me throughout life, the acceptance of the power of transformative grace. These moments seem to be this “kindsight”, a habit I am learning to cultivate. Thank you for the encouragement to keep going forward!