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This darling of my life sent me a heart-rending note saying:
I am still your niece, the little girl you knew, who spilled all her chocolate beans on the ground…and now learning how to pick them all up again.
It's fun picking up spilled beans when you are three.
It's a good lesson doing that again when you are twenty-three.
But to think that you will spend the best part of your life picking up spilled beans breaks my heart.
Why squander away the best part of your life, when you can shine like diamonds doing things that you do the best?
I was perhaps guided too much by my personal experience:
Dad died at the golden age of 50, and I had to give up academic pursuit so I could support the family
I once had a business of my own, which failed. Found that I did not have the temperament for a businessman. I quit and I moved on …
I was thinking not of chocolate beans, but of the carousel of time that Joni Mitchell sang about in The Circle Game. This is her farewell to youth, written originally for her compatriot Neil Young on turning 21 (the same Neil Young who once sang: Now only love can break your heart …).
I would have felt better if she admitted this is her own brave choice, and not something ordered by another Being. It's like you don't even know where the spilled beans are!
Mitchell's song can be found in youtube:
Lyrics:
The Circle Game
Yesterday, a child came out to wander
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
Then, the child moved ten times 'round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, "When you're older", must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came,
and go round and round and round
In the circle game
Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him, "Take your time. It won't be long now.
'Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down"
And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.
And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and 'round and 'round
In the circle game
And go 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game.