I enjoy poetry because it uses an economy of words to convey an important message or feeling. I recently stumbled across a YouTube channel run by a cowboy named Dewayne Noel and I watched a few of his videos. I don’t have horse, so I can’t relate to his vocation specific videos, but a good many of his videos are just simple life advice delivered in a thoughtful, straightforward manner. He started a recent video smoking his pipe and reciting the poem below, which I can only assume that he wrote because a search for it on Google returned zero results.
Am I inside looking out
Or outside looking in?
And can I help but doubt,
That I’m ever going to win,
If I cannot tell whether
I am the spectator or the sport?
This world is very fast,
But I am frightful slow.
Yet I hold onto the past
While in my heart I know
That the past gets left behind
With any fool bound to it.
But my ways are still my ways.
Cause whose else can they be?
So I will weave today
On a loom I built for me
A cloth both course and rustic
With a pattern vaguely primeval.
My Bullet Point Takeaways:
- Let the past go, especially this time of year. Forgive. Mend fences. Or plain just let it go and move on.
- You don’t have to live your life the way everyone expects you to.
- You have agency. Don’t just let life happen. Figure out what you really want out of life and use every tool available to make that happen. Yes, you’re busy, but carve out a few hours between now and year-end to sit with your thoughts, reflect on your past and plan for your future. Then start weaving.
- Your path doesn’t need to be perfect. The cowboy poet’s pattern was “course and rustic.” But it was his.
Just a few thoughts that hopefully offer a little encouragement or inspiration as you reflect on this past year and start planning for the next.
Be Intentional,
Joe