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Reflecting Thought

  There is often little time for reflection though the hours never cease to pile up.  Much is thought of, many things are remembered, but little is reflected upon.  There is a difference between thinking and reflecting; one of them presents a plan or an image, which is transformed according to feeling, or exterior phenomena that seeks an end, or a means to an end; the other is the transformation of thought without end, it simply looks, it watches the worry come and go, plans arise and finish.  When you step back from a wall, you can see how high it is, but when you are very close, you must grasp onto something because there is no way to see where you are.  So reflecting is a way to stand back and see how far the thought goes, while thinking holds to the thought as long as it wants.  Reflection shows that thoughts do not control you, while thinking always seeks a thought to control. Douglas Thornton
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A Poet's Journal: November 7th, 2013


November 7th, 2013
Most often what we fear is not the future itself, but what must be left behind.  But this is a strange thought because expectation arrives so quickly that it turns what is around us into a hindrance that cannot be let go of soon enough.  But it is also a melancholic thought because if we do not leave, the joy of giving breath to something that was for so long taken away, shall lengthen into the despair of us never feeling the flow of life again.

Douglas Thornton

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