I like to think of myself as somewhat of an amateur poet. I am just 21 but have had a lot happen to me and have only just realised that I was growing into a person but did not quite know what person I was or what person I had thought I wanted to become. I knew I needed a sense of self, a sense of me, but I was referring to myself in my thoughts as a different person, I was impersonal to myself, just as when people refer to themselves as "one". For example, "One is pleased" or "One likes this" - I realised I was in a state of being this "one" .. this person with no identity, this being who simply existed.. The realisation of this was the best thing to ever happen to me, no longer was I going to be a sheep following the footsteps of every other sheep, I was going to go on a journey to find myself. And through developing a love for the outdoors and - more than anything, a love for there being a distance between myself and normality, reality and civilisation with nothing but mountains and wilderness in between. It was an almost spirit seeking, soul searching journey undertaken over a period of time. And on coming back, I knew who I was, I had a goal, I had ambitions, I had a blank canvas, I forgot about past worries or people who doubted me, I developed outdoors skills, I created a person to want to be, I practiced bushcraft, I loved being me, I found a person and realised that I could become self reliant - not just outdoors or survival-wise but I could rely on developing this person I found and rely on knowing who I was. On my return from the mountains and wilderness, I wrote this.
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Run afar from the dreamless and hopeful not,
Create distance between ones self and those estranged,
Everything so fragile as a fly to a single swat,
Let a passion become yours and not one arranged,
Repel advice from those whom you shan't admire,
Regard ones self and engage in contemplation,
Run afar from households, find a home to retire,
Seek the enigma always held as you - within one,
One is a cold sculpture, warm to but a few,
The beauty of one remains hidden to almost all,
But finding a self, reveals not this one, but the you,
Then all left to do is climb on and not fall,
Falling reveals chasms of past, memories of hurt,
Clamber rocky faces, full of eyes flooded in guilt,
Fortune underlies no man, stay always alert,
Know the petals of the never flower, shall surely wilt,
At last the presence is now of you, and not one,
Mountains to seek with maps of each new sun,
Be sure to ascend untangled, with ropes of the done,
Now a future reveals hopes, far more - than just one.
- One. By Jack Spencer.
Thank you.
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Run afar from the dreamless and hopeful not,
Create distance between ones self and those estranged,
Everything so fragile as a fly to a single swat,
Let a passion become yours and not one arranged,
Repel advice from those whom you shan't admire,
Regard ones self and engage in contemplation,
Run afar from households, find a home to retire,
Seek the enigma always held as you - within one,
One is a cold sculpture, warm to but a few,
The beauty of one remains hidden to almost all,
But finding a self, reveals not this one, but the you,
Then all left to do is climb on and not fall,
Falling reveals chasms of past, memories of hurt,
Clamber rocky faces, full of eyes flooded in guilt,
Fortune underlies no man, stay always alert,
Know the petals of the never flower, shall surely wilt,
At last the presence is now of you, and not one,
Mountains to seek with maps of each new sun,
Be sure to ascend untangled, with ropes of the done,
Now a future reveals hopes, far more - than just one.
- One. By Jack Spencer.
Thank you.
