While pondering upon Abraham
Lincoln’s poem, My Childhood’s Home I See
Again, I was struck by the vivid idea that our minds can filter out the bad
memories. I am not sure why. Is it to protect us from the destruction of
negative thoughts and to set us on a higher course? Edgar Allen Poe reveals
that destruction. The Raven, reminds
me of how easily we get caught up in our negative thoughts. We hear something;
we feel something, then almost in a superstitious manner our emotions lead.
Instantaneously a flood of negative voices interprets the situation falsely
without our notice; we believe it and begin to perceive everything through the
gloomy perspective. Destruction is personified in the raven. At the beginning
of the poem, I carefully took note how Poe’s character transitioned from a
“safer” place to one more insecure by relying more and more on the environment
and the negative voices inside his head. One ought to be weary of fraudulent
negative voices and rely more and more on the sweet memories and of truth.
As I contemplated what to write
next I found that my mind was in a poetic mood after having read pages of
poetry in the last month. My thoughts and words soon evolved into a poetic
fashion as I considered the following thought: Memories can be “freed from all
that’s earthly vile.”[1] I
think of raising my first four children and how I made so many mistakes because
of a lack of knowledge, my inexperience and immaturity, however, they never
remember the bad as much as they remember the good, they truly are freed from
the earthly vile.
Pondering on the past mistakes,
I sometimes let the negative thoughts possess me.
They overpower me,
Sending me in a downward spiral.
Groping for goodness to hang on to,
I sift through the negative,
Remembering somehow its fallaciousness,
And distortion from truth.
On occasions, my children talk
of their memories
and speak only of happy times.
This happy talk arrests me unfailingly.
I wonder how they remember not my errors.
Turn I to the Almighty in question,
“My God,” I implore,
“Dost thou bless me twice?
Once to blind my children from my blunders,
And once more when I am old
to hear from them only the good?”
