To The Teenage Souls
1.
My soul is old.
Ancient, even.
Battle worn, weary.
She takes frequent breaks.
Needs a lot of breathing room.
My human self gets impatient.
Embarrassed.
In this dimension, slowness is not a virtue.
My soul just smiles at the teenage souls hurtling through space
as though they only get one try.
To her,
a lifetime is but the blink of an eye.
She would rather take her time,
this time, at least,
to really get it right.
To etch the lessons into our bones,
rather than endure ten more revolutions
of the human mind.
2.
“Oh, you’re old!”
The young woman exclaims as she passes me on the trail.
“From afar I thought you were a kid.”
I rein in the part of me that wants to take offense at her words.
No.
Today I choose to see her as a messenger from beyond.
I nod knowingly.
47 may not be old, at least in my world.
But 4,700+ certainly is.
The young woman will never know how right she is.
I seek validation
in the oldest of the trees,
whose girth and stateliness ground me so much more deeply
than their spindly sapling offspring.
3.
So to all the teenage souls out there:
Live fully.
Keep racing to the finish line.
But file this away in one of the chambers of your soul
to dust off a few lifetimes down the line.
Remember to pause.
To relish the time you have.
To realize there are no setbacks,
no getting ahead,
no finish line.
And that in this realm,
the slower you go,
the faster you learn and
E v o l v e