I love writing poetry and exploring the depths of my emotions and their meaning. For instance, I used to think that a person is a solo object floating in the midst of abstract indefiniteness yet has a mysterious link to all other things. Is that even possible, to be an individual and still be part of the whole, and yet a free spirit but sad when alone?
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent,” said John Donne. “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,” says the master of metaphysical poets.
Then he says in another place, “Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.” Is not this the predicament of man that we all of a kind have freedom in our hands and chains on our ankles? We tread a fine line between intellect and mental illness; between killing and healing, between blessing and cursing, and loving the sinner yet hating the sin. What is this craziness we have gotten ourselves into? “All we like sheep have gone astray,” and in our ignorance, we know no other way, and the mouth speaks what it wants to say, while 150,000 men die every single day. “We do not live for ourselves only, and we do not die for ourselves only.”
We are not solo objects in the midst of many but rather an important thread in a complex tapestry weaved together into a beautiful garment. All the threads becoming one in a Divinely orchestrated concert of perfectly tuned harmonics, everyone for all the others, performing in love for the One who loved perfectly, living together in the gladness of heart FOREVER. No, this is not solo, this is unity and completeness. This is the depth of all our emotions and what we were created for; this is the meaning of life and fulfillment, it is what we have been longing for.
‘No Man is an Island’
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne