An excerpt from 'POE + PASSION'

This evening we will discard our assumptions, we will challenge our premises and we will examine our souls. We as a group, fashionably nicknamed zoomers, have indeed zoomed through life. Many of us although well-intentioned have zoomed through too quickly and too earnestly. You are here tonight to address the dismay, distress, disillusionment and despair that you feel about a life you’ve come to realize just doesn’t add up.

And we so need our lives to add up don’t we? We want to feel a resonance and satisfaction with what life returns to us from the boundless personal energies we expend. If we haven’t done so already, tonight we will dig deep and tap into that unique, elemental, defining point within ourselves from which we will begin again. As we proceed, keep in your minds a little phrase from an old song called “Closing Time”, - “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Bear in mind also that complex problems cannot be solved but any complex problem can be rendered simple – think “E=MC2.”

I have emerged from my own complex mire by following two simple caveats that I ask this evening, for you to adopt as your own.

My first caveat is - Only YOU can affect a change. You must find your own answers within and in order to do this you need to create an atmosphere conducive to self-dialogue. You need to sloooooooooow down, be quiet - listen to yourself. Take yourself out for a test drive and run yourself through your paces - see exactly what your rigging can handle. By this I don’t mean sign up for the iron man, I mean build on your natural abilities as they have emerged in whatever otherwise mismatched profession or occupation you are now seeking to change. Have you excelled at planning your office parties but flop consistently at reconciling the month-end statement? Then think of yourself as a successful event planner NOT as an accounting failure and NEVER look at yourself through someone else’s eyes. Stand on your own and define your own world. You need to revel boldly in your vibrant, colourful aloneness rather than fade away to beige with the rest of the crowd.

Boldly declare yourself like Edgar Alan Poe in his poem, “Alone”


"From childhood's hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone — And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —


What a bold assertion!

What a completely unapologetic affirmation of this poet’s unique singularity!

With what familiar resonance these sentiments are echoed in my mind and in my heart!

Poe embraced his singularity to fulfil his destiny and secure a position of posterity in literary history. By no means a role-model for every facet of life; Poe’s one caveat that we should all take to heart is to acknowledge and nurture our own uniqueness and be true to ourselves as we explore each heading on our course through life. I believe that unless we do this our outcome is worse than death – it is never to have lived in the first place.

Many, many people never fulfil their own destinies. They end up living lives that never feel right and never fit right. An ill-fitting shoe may blister your “sole” but an ill-fitting life will blister your “soul! It is a very uncomfortable way to live - but for this transgression against self, I am the first to issue a “me culpa”....

written by Judith Garel

To read this entry in its entirety, please visit
http://juds2u.blogspot.com/2009_09_20_archive.html