When Our Lives Changed

There was a time
when we stood proud and secure,
certain in our rightness.

We floated in a bubble of invulnerability,
isolated from the perils of the world.

Until our luck ran out,
and our fantasies were punctured.

And how have we coped,
these long years,
with this hard-won knowledge,
that we do not live in the world
that we think we made?

For many,
it has been a journey
of deeper denial.

For others,
it was an awakening,
brutal but necessary.

For the willing,
it is a lesson in uncertainty,
a prod to find the middle way
between hope and despair.

And all these years later,
if we have not lost our dreams,
perhaps, in the light of day,
they have been transmuted.

As we relinquish our fantasies
of our world as we think it is,
or as it should be,
there is a path that opens.

Perhaps, as we accept what is,
we can move on,
sobered by our seeing,
inspired by our vision
of what it could be,
and what we can do,
if we are willing to change it.