I can’t claim to know anything about poetry, but one line from a poem we heard last night at the writers meeting has stuck in my head and become a mantra for the immediate future. It’s not particularly poetic, I suppose, but then much passes these days, and I find a mountain of meaning in the simple words: "I don’t want to."
Real, relative, concise. No fantasy or b.s. It carries the easy decision of a moment; it carries the weighted soul of a lifetime. It reveals character, or a temporary character flaw. It can also reveal just the opposite of it’s normal connotation by the deed it is dealing with. It shows reluctance to carry through at all, yet it does not foretell the future–for how often do we do what we must, rather than what we want.
But "I don’t want to" is above all, honest.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
You expressed this perfectly … “I don’t want to” is, at the very least, unvarnished honesty
Sometimes knowing what it is that we don’t want to do is how we figure out what it is that we DO want to do (not that it necessarily translates to action, but at least it defines a potential direction)
Knew you’d appreciate it, as another who has done a lotta gotta’s in life, and is learning, like me, to find the things important to us and eliminate some of those that we only do to please others.