Monday, March 19, 2018

Carpe Diem #1392 A Children's Game


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Another day went by and it was a busy day. I had the shift on the chemo-unit and we had a large group of patients today, but we made it. It's an every day challenge to make your patients comfortable and happy ...

Several weeks ago I had a patient on the chemo-unit who was only 20 yrs, he could have been my son, so it was tough. Today we had patients that were a little bit older and that makes is sometimes easier, but I will never cope fully with this deathly illness we know as cancer.

There are sometimes days that I wished to be a child again, for example as I have youngsters on the chemo-unit as e.g. that boy of 20 yrs. Yes ... I love my work as an oncology nurse, but it is tough and it sometimes tears me apart as I see how my patients are loosing the battle against cancer. That hurts and it makes me angry, "why is there this illness why this cancer ...!?".

A Children's Game
Being a child again ... I think you have all experienced such thing sometimes. Wishing to be a child again ... Will you do the same things you have done? As I look at myself ... as could do my life over again than I would do it the same way as I have done.
No one has said that life will be easy and through life we learn a lot ... And ... we can not be children again, but we can be like children.

Being like children that we can be for sure. Being happy with the beauty of a bubble, or the beauty of a selfdrawn picture ...
Being like children ... I think this poem by Rumi, the Mystical Poet, describes that feeling ... but maybe that's only my thought about this beautiful poem.

This poem is titled "A Children's Game". I extracted it from "The Essential Rumi" by Coleman Barks.

A Children's Game:

Listen to the poet Sanai,
who lived secluded: "Don't wander out on the road
in your ecstasy. Sleep in the tavern.

"When a drunk strays out to the street,
children make fun of him.
He falls down in the mud.
He takes any and every road.
The children follow,not knowing the taste of wine, or how
his drunkenness feels. All people on the planet
are children, except for a very few.
No one is grown up except those free of desire.

God said,
"The world is a play, a children's game,
and you are the children.
"God speaks the truth.
If you haven't left the child's play,
how can you be an adult?
Without purity of spirit,
if you're still in the middle of lust and greed
and other wantings, you're like children
playing at sexual intercourse.
They wrestle
and rub together, but it's not sex!

The same with the sightings of mankind.
It's a squabble with play-swords.
No purpose, totally futile.

Like kids on hobby horses, soldiers claim to be riding
Boraq, Muhammad's night-horse, or Duldul, his mule.

Your actions mean nothing, the sex and war that you do.
You're holding part of your pants and prancing around,
Dun-da-dun, dun-da-dun.

Don't wait till you die to see this.
Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies.

Hobby Horse (wikipedia)

The knowing of mystic lovers is different.
The empirical, sensory, sciences
are like a donkey loaded with books,
or like the makeup woman's makeup.
It washes off.
But if you lift the baggage rightly, it will give joy.
Don't carry your knowledge-load for some selfish reason.
Deny your desires and willfulness,
and a real mount may appear under you.

Don't be satisfied with the name of HU,
with just words about it.

Experience that breathing.
From books and words come fantasy,
and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.

© Rumi

A wonderful poem to work with I think. I am sorry I wasn't inspired enough, so I have one from my archive.

New Year's Eve
children playing with the fresh fallen snow -
fireworks coloring the sky

© Chèvrefeuille (2014)

And here is one that I wrote in 2015:

fountain of joy
children playing with paper boats
one sunny day

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until March 26th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.


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