TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

If someone asked you, at the end of your life, “What was your life like?” I wonder what you might say. How would you characterize your lived experience — the whole of it, cradle to grave? You couldn’t tell every story, or detail every friendship or romantic relationship. You couldn’t list all of your jobs or accomplishments in some sort of highlight reel. You couldn’t describe every place you visited and what you experienced there. So how would you summarize your life? Your tiny-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-but-enormous-to-you life?

If someone asked me, at the end of my life, “What was your life like, Maggie?” I might say that it was more challenging than I thought it would be, and also more beautiful and fulfilling than I expected. I might say that my life was mostly very happy, thanks to the people who love me. I’m sure I would talk about my children, and my friends and family, and writing — all of which have enlarged my life in countless ways. 

Whatever my life has been like, I’m lucky to have lived it. I know that now, and I hope I feel that way at the end. Because what are the odds?! I remind myself of this when I get discouraged: What are the odds that I’m here at all, getting to see what I see, and hear what I hear, and feel what I feel?

I admire today’s poem for its wisdom, its sense of gratitude, and its plainspokenness. There is one particular line in the middle of the poem that stops me in my tracks every time I read it. I wonder if it will stop you in yours.

It Was Like This: You Were Happy
by Jane Hirshfield

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

—2002

“It Was Like This: You Were Happy” by Jane Hirshfield from AFTER © 2007 Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of the poet.