Tag Archives: soul

The Time of Our Lives

“Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.” are the profound last lines of the poem, Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day, by Delmore Schwartz. It’s a beautiful philosophical contemplation of the passage of time, with a particularly great wrap-up last stanza.

The seconds, minutes, hours tick away relentlessly. Our lives are busy, and inundated with many distractions and responsibilities. Lately I’m looking at my age and thinking, “Wow! It’s going faster than I ever imagined at age 18.”

Realistically, we don’t have time to sit around and endlessly ponder about the value of time and our lives. But, it’s useful to carve out a little time (from time to time) for such introspection. Because your life IS precious, and the clock IS ticking. Ask yourself in this moment, are you spending your life the way you really desire to?

It is crucially important to have vision and intention for our lives. Otherwise, we will just end up with someone else’s idea of how life should be.

Inspirational Time Quotes:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” ~ Mark Twain

“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.” ~ Marie Lu

“Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.” ~ Roy T. Bennett

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” ~ Mitch Albom

Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best for 2026. 🙂

Eternal Comings and Goings

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Soul Mate

Eternal surprise,
all the hellos and goodbyes,
right there in your eyes.

The Trip

We arrive
with no luggage
and leave with
none too,
so why do we
spend a lifetime
accumulating
mere things?

To prop up
our egos,
and relieve
our boredom,
to salve our
hurts, and
impress the
neighbors.

Within the
glorious potential
of the soul’s
quest, we lay
waste to what
could have been
for the next
new toy.

The kids
fight over the
treasures
left behind
by their parents,
thinking that the
having is some
kind of victory.

But the wounds
inflicted in the
fight for more
are baggage of
a different kind,
ones that can
cross over if we
don’t take care.

Traveling light
and loving well
are the real
accomplishments,
and as big as
they are, they
pack small
for the leaving.

I will finish with a humorous note. Imagine if we could take our stuff with us, and then bring it back again in another life? What a mess that would be! We’d each need a locker in the in-between, and after our period of contemplation, claim our stuff to take back. *groan* There are so many permutations to this, I am weary just entertaining the thought. So many questions, so little time… Wishing you a wonderful day. 🙂

Find my writing for our human future at my Substack: humanitysfuture.substack.com

The Wisdom of Walt Whitman

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“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ~ Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

Do you think the poetry of poets such as Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson is outdated, or are the concepts classic, and therefore never go out of style? They are the basics of life, and speak to the fundamental principles that humanity aspires to, over and over again.

Whitman speaks here (in a very eloquent way) of love, compassion, connectedness, humility, courage, determination, discernment, independence of thought, knowing and being true to one’s self.

If these principles have gone “out of style” at the moment, perhaps it’s time to bring them back…

More inspirational quotes by Walt Whitman:

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”

“I am large, I contain multitudes”

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”

Life Is a Gift (Susan L Hart)

It’s a blue-sky day,
one of those
beauteous blue-full,
joyously jocular,
splendidly splashy,
exceptional days –
I long to shout
LIFE IS A GIFT
in unmistakable
letters across the
blue shiny yonder,
to imprint them
indelibly on your
mind, so you’ll –

Remember when
the dark clouds roll
in, on a day when
life feels pissy and
oh so problematic,
to take a deep breath,
and close your eyes,
and gently pull the
gray gloom aside,
to see those big
oh so true words
I etched on blue
for you, so that
you’d never forget –

Life is a gift.

Life is a Gift © Susan L Hart 2024 / Is an excerpt from my ebook Soul Journey: The Poetry of Life.