Life is rich and full of details to think about
Ever since my mother introduced me to a little book she got from a friend when they were young, written by Patience Strong, I have been thinking about the concept of it.
Patience Strong, a pen name for Winnifred Emma May (1907–1990) was a poet from the UK, and she became famous and loved for her short, daily poems that were observations of life, hints about how to enjoy life more, and other thoughts.
The poems were during many years published in various printed media, and they were also featured in collections, making it possible to have them by hand in book-form.
My mother passed away 10 years ago, so I have not been acting fast, I admit. Maybe I was reluctant to jump into something that looked like an idea from the past, not suitable for the people of today — or maybe it was more about the feminine aspect of being an everyday philosopher, not matching the more brutal, masculine business-inclined forward-thinking, I had become accustomed to.
However, life does not consist of just one end of the psychological specter. Each and every human being has a full set of capabilities to think and wonder about the world. That some decide to suppress the ability to look behind the mirror, should not prevent others from growing it.
And this really is about mirrors. Usually, we use mirrors as an analogy for seeing ourselves. But you see everything around you as well, believing that this is the world. And what you see becomes your world. But the mirror shows us mostly what is behind us, symbolic of the past. Focusing too much on the past will make you blind for what is beyond — behind the mirror.
Many are the stories where someone walks through the mirror and sees a world where everything is opposite. Alice in Wonderland is a famous example, and it certainly is an enjoyable story.
But what Patience Strong was doing, wasn’t to walk through the mirror — she did perhaps use the mirror in some of her poems to make you, the reader, understand how you are, how you behave, what society is doing, more precisely, with you as a member. But she also moved the mirror out of the picture to be able to illustrate the full and real world, allowing you to progress through life with a bigger perspective.
These poems were a great inspiration to my mother throughout her life, and she supplemented them with other small poems from similar writers, becoming kind of an expert in these little gems of life wisdom, always able to find a suitable one for any occasion.
I am not Patience Strong. In many ways, my life and the world I live in are different sizes, having a different nature. And I, myself, cannot resemble that outspoken feminine touch she gave to her thoughts. Even a touch from a different time, you could say, but to me, it also shows a connection with the rich set of thoughts that are more prone to appear with a person who goes through life as a woman.
I am not the opposite, either. I cannot allow myself to subscribe to gender-specific ideas of what can be written, and what I should express, according to society norms.
What I try to be is a more rounded person, taking in thoughts from all sides of the human life and mind, letting empathy and compassion rule my decisions on what to write. In this try, I am in a sense victimizing myself to the struggle that poets of all times have been in: how to express some kind of universal humanity, a sense of the world that will resonate with all readers, be they male or female.
So, the concept is to continue in the spirit of Patience Strong but with a different soul, different observations of life, different perspectives at times — forever trying to make my daily thoughts on life being valuable and rewarding short reads to inspire and build hope for the future, joy of the day, and a combination of what is reflected by the mirror, seen behind it, and found when moving through it.
The photo is from a “free images” website, but I don’t remember which, or who made it.
