A Note For Monday

This is not my usual sort of fair, however I think the poem speaks well of a truth that I neglect so often. I apologize to the author if the spacing of the poem does not work out. I have not mastered the finer points of blogging yet. Please forgive me. Everyone else- think on this:

"In Blocking off what hurts
us, we think we are
walling ourselves off from
pain. But in the long
run, the wall, which prevents
growth, hurts us more than the
pain which, if we will only
bear it, soon passes over us.
Washes over us and is
gone. Long will we remember
pain, but the pain itself, as
it was at the
point of intensity that made
us feel as if we must
die of it, eventually
vanishes. Our memory of
it becomes only a
trace.
Walls remain. They grow
moss. They are difficult barriers
to cross, to get to others,
to get to closed-down
parts of ourselves."

-Alice Walker