The Same

It costs much to grow old:

I've fondled the Springs

like sticks of new furniture

with the wood still sweet to the smell, suave

in the grain, and hidden away in its lockers,

I've stored my wild honey.

That's why the bell tolled

bearing its sound to the dead,

out of range of my reason:

one grows used to one's skin,

the cut of one's nose, one's good looks,

while summer by summer, the sun

sinks in its brazier.

Noting the sea's health,

its insistence on turbulence,

I kept skimming the beaches;

now seated on waves

I keep the bitter green smell

of a lifetime's apprenticeship 

to live on in the whole of my motion.

Pablo Neruda.

Not me.  Unfortunately, I can't take credit for such exquisite words.  I must memorize them, though.  

Anywho, today I am thinking about people, and why we use expressions like, "I hope he/she/they get what he/she/they deserve!"  I notice that we only refer to people we do not particularly like, and typically, we use it in anger towards another person.  But I wonder why we waste this hateful kind of hope on people we dislike.  I wonder why we don't hope for better things than that, for others and ourselves.  I just think about "worth" and "deserving," and how we fit into these terms.  Since we'd all like to believe that our worth isn't determined by anyone but ourselves, why do we settle for so little all the time?  And why the hell don't we "get what we deserve?"  I never really thought about it much before, but now I wonder how much credit I really give myself.  I think that we all deserve the best of whatever is out there.  I wonder what kind of hope I have for myself, and if I could really be hopeful of getting what I really deserve.  And what exactly do I deserve?