I lived to walk among the scenes

Of people walking by.

I lived to hear the mother's scream

And hear the baby's cry.

I lived to lend my helping hand

Until one day I saw

The thing I could not understand

And I stood there in awe

That like a child who will rush

To school as parents wait

For absent cries and feel the brush

Away from the front gate,

The people who I helped throughout

Their lives were doing fine

But when they went away came out

The sorry state of mine.

I lived the outside looking in

And tried to break the glass.

It seemed that I could never win,

Not first but always last.

I questioned then what would I take

If not my prior path

Of soothing wounds and pains and aches

Until I would collapse.

At first the guilt surrounded me

Like darkness in the night

Because of the expectancy

I carried through my life.

In stress supportive words ensued,

Yet words misunderstood,

My mind had somehow misconstrued

"You can" into "You should".

So on one day while idling,

Not long ago at all,

I strangely started smiling

After I hit the wall.

Just like my friend Thoreau had done

At Walden in his prime

I wondered how it would be won,

The battle of my time.

For once I focused solely on

Desires of the self,

And not of those who now were gone

And pictures on a shelf.

The answer came to me quite soon

Not in thoughts for my path

But in memories that did bloom

From learning during math.

The thirst for knowledge in the quest

To add, subtract, divide,

And solve equations on a test

Like problems in my mind.

I'd found what would make me happy,

And even though it lacked

The utmost generosity

Of my previous path,

This new career is the right one

And one I want today.

Once shrouded, now I see the sun,

Excited every day.

For like Thoreau, my questioning

On my place in my life

Had found a new song I would sing

Through good times and through strife.

And what I lived for, it may seem,

A good thing anyhow,

But I do not wish it to be

What I will live for now.