There is a poem that I adore
I came across it ages ago and never let it go because it is a great tool to get out of a rut
It’s called There's a Hole in My Sidewalk by Portia Nelson. The poem itself is about a cycle, self-undoing, challenges, obstacles and addiction but also recovery and an ending of a repetitive cycle that a person can put themselves in (consciously or subconsciously). If there is a problem that happens to be on-going in your life then there could be a pattern and if you were to try to actively detect what patterns they are then it can be used an opportunity to put an ending to the underlying problem that is causing for all these other problems to come up! (I hope that made sense
). Enough rambling, here is the poem. It’s short but affective if you can play your cards right
Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down another street.
There is a painting by Frazetta (who is known for creating realistically unrealistic works of art and I love it
You can really get lost in his paintings. A fantasy world showed forth so well through a paint brush or drawing), where a grown muscular man is in a swamp environment and he is being entangled by this snake-like creature from beneath this swamp. The man has a knife in his right-hand and he seems to be struggling to untangle this creature from his limbs. He still continues to wrestle and fight through it appears (just from how his arms are positioned). I feel that this aligns well with Nelson’s poem about that sidewalk. It might not seem apparent at first, given the imagery but if you were to look at it for what it is then you can see that this snake-like creature would be the obstacle (that hole) and it is such an obstacle that it distorts that man’s vision from seeing a way to escape it release himself from that obstacle (are you still following me here?
), so in turn it becomes more difficult.
However, like in the poem about walking around that sidewalk and walking to a different street, this man can use that knife (possibly
) to stab that creature and get himself release from its coils but also there needs to be a will to want to do so because in the poem it mentions feelings of helplessness. Yeah, those feelings will come (Which is given when it comes to encountering difficult obstacles) but you cannot allow for yourself to just utterly give up because if this man were to give up fighting then he would die and allow for this creature to consume him. You have the power to change that friends
I hope this helped someone. Anyways, this poem is great