I have this experience a lot, and I had it in a big way recently, so this poem feels like both a salve and a chisel:
Pride
Even rocks crack, I tell you,
and not because of age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years,
it almost seems peaceful.
They don’t move, so the cracks stay hidden.
A kind of pride.
Years pass over them, waiting.
Whoever is going to shatter them
hasn’t come yet.
And so the moss flourishes, the seaweed swirls,
the seaweed pushes through and rolls back,
and it seems they are motionless.
Till a little seal comes to rub against the rocks,
comes and goes away.
And suddenly the stone is split.
I told you, when people break, it happens by surprise.
— Dahlia Ravikovitch
(Read the first post at How to Save the World, and This is the Part Where You’re Supposed To Save Me at 37 Days)
BEYOND RIVALRY 