This is what life does

I had started doing a form of free writing called Wild Writing, using prompts from poetry. Below is the piece that emerged from the particular line that this post is titled. Enjoy.

This is what life does. It lets you alone most of the time. It does. Until you screw yourself big time. And then you feel like life is in your way. Life is your biggest enemy. Life is out to get you. But no. Really no. You are out to get yourself. You wish for the never been. You wish to undo things. Undo the past. Undo your mistakes. Undo the many opportunities lost to caution, lost to fear, lost to disbelief.

This is what life does. It lets you speed along or crawl along. Everyone at their own pace. Really, it does. Occasionally, you feel out of sync, out of whack. Then you wish for a different life, or life as quite different as it is right now. A time in years past most likely. That’s when we wistful, longing for a different, better time. Always we look backwards, seldom forwards. I wonder why that is. Is it because we were happiest when we were simple, naive and ignorant? Ignorance is bliss, they say. Ignorance is bliss, I’ve said before.

This is what life does. It walks with you, shoulder to shoulder. It is your companion. Oh, treat it like one and it will be exactly that. But it is an odd one, you know. Or it’s a bit of a Libra or a mimic. The point is that it will treat you how you treat it. If you think of it as a companion, companion it be to you. If you think of it as your enemy, then enemy it be. If you think of it as an other sentience, an in between, a power with no power, none except what you imbue it with, then it will be all those also. Believe what it is as you like. But believe in yourself foremost.

P.S. For those curious, the prompt came from a poem titled Starfish by Eleanor Lerman.