Love after Love

In that iteration of me which is part counsellor and part coach, I have often observed or worked with people who exhibit a confident exterior only to reveal a sensitive, uncertain side of their personality under certain circumstances.

In actual fact I would not exclude myself from this category - and the more astute among you would note my attempt to disguise this side of my character in double-negatives phrasing.

Recently an old friend posted a few lines of a Derek Walcott poem and I had cause to read it through again and again.

I reproduce it here for no other reason that it struck a chord within me.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.