A friend was telling me recently that she had hosted a childhood friend for a weekend visit, and in the runup to it she had greatly looked forward to the time they were to spend together. As it turned out, it was wonderful and all she had hoped for, she beamed. Which, she noted, was a great relief, because “It doesn’t always turn out that way.”
Indeed it doesn’t.
In his much-anthologized poem, “Next, Please,” English poet Philip Larkin, a brooding sort as perhaps a majority of poets this side of Mary Oliver are, suggested that it almost never does, and that this human penchant for almost giddy anticipation and “expectancy” is doomed to suffer when it collides with reality.
It’s as if our imaginations sabotage us, outpacing our ability to create or at least appreciate the emotional experiences we had been so eagerly anticipating.
Read MoreOr, as Paul McCartney’s mama told him in three short wor...
Recent Comments