how shifty we are

the journey is who we are

maybe life can be like a trackless wood,
more often, it seems to me,
it’s not the lack of a path before us,
but a bewildering exuberance of tracks before us,
each of which has branch after branch,
and we still must move forward with dispatch,
choosing and acting upon this way or that
and in all of those choices we become who we are,
our destination shifts and shifts,
and we do well to remember the journey is who we are,
we create a shifting oneness as decisions are made and remade,
as we know both truths to right and left,
and we scramble along, somehow between them,
as revelation opens a way,
the truth of one part of who we are
wins for the moment over a contrasting part,
though the “victory” is of the moment,
we are each unique,
a peg for whom there is only one hole,
and yet we are each communal,
and we seek to fit into a larger whole, somehow,
and we walk within that dichotomy,
the introvert and extrovert,
the liberal and the conservative,
the ascetic and the indulgent--
so many decisions, so many choices,
and in the long choosing of first one then the other
we move forward,

the oscillations power the self to know itself
and every moment defines and redefines the knowing,
who am I? what I tell you today
will only be part of the truth that I will tell you tomorrow.

by Henry Walker
February 5, 2010