Perspectives are Still Free

Holidays, birthdays, etc. generally make me very uncomfortable, and I do not think I am alone in that. While it is always a wonderful pleasure to reunite with friends and family, it seems that there is never enough time to see everyone, never the perfect gift to be given, and rarely an event without some sort of drama to boot. This past holiday season, I was left with an empty void, as I was not able to travel home to be with family. Luckily, I joined my parents a few weeks prior, and my mother gave me what will probably be the best present of my life - the journal of my Great, Great Aunt Melaine, the only other person in my family to ever life the crazy, electric life that the city of New York offers. On the front page, Great, Great Aunt Melaine posted the following poem, which I have traced to the poet Sam Walter Foss and found to have great relavence and hopeful inspiration to these difficult times:

The House by the Side of the Road

THERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.
Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Sam Walter Foss