Gets me Thinking

This poem snared me this morning as I lay in bed preparing for my weekend workday.

No Deal

And when I died, the devil came and said,
"Now here's the deal: I'll give you your old life
all over once again, no strings attached.
Like an actor in a play, of course, you'll have
to follow the same script that you rehearsed
the first time through—you cannot change a glance,
a word, a gesture; but think of taking your first
steps again, and having your first romance

repeat itself, your love back from the dead,
beautiful and new and seventeen.
What matter if you see the future coming—
The cloven hoof of sorrow, loss's horn—
her dreamy eye, her nodding head?"
Get thee behind me, Satan, I should have said.

by Ronald Wallace


What if you were promised the life you have now all over again but only if you had to play the cards exactly the same way and have that sharp view into your future? I wouldn't bite, much as I love life.

I prefer to wonder, as a dear friend of mine already knows, if ......."each of us has chosen his or her path before coming to live out this incarnation, and that [we] are learning lessons [we] came here to learn, as hard and painful as they may be. You may never know during life what the lessons are, or even if you are facing problems as you originally set out to do, but some day you will know what happened this time around. And then all the people around you (me included) will get to come back here again and do it another time, another way."

I love this friend. As this poem makes me think, so also does she.