Down the corridor of your mind are many doors
Who knows what lies behind them?
Life makes you choose.
In youth, hungry to win, afraid to lose
Not wanting to disappoint, and eager to please
You open them with ease.

Some bring you failure, or its twin, success
Some seem a certainty, others a guess
You find many unimportant
Or only means to ends
Behind some lie enemies,
A precious few hide friends.

The trip down this corridor is a test
To prove to yourself you have what it takes
Focusing on your goal, ignoring the rest
Savouring your victories, exposing mistakes
You press on to be best.

At some point down this corridor, far from the start
When you least expect
A new door opens to a journey apart
You meet someone and suddenly connect
And are led down the corridor of the heart.

This new corridor is different though,
Its journey lifelong
Behind each door lessons are learned
New emotions you couldn’t know
Right and wrong the hard way earned
Daily paid as feelings grow.


These emotions conflict as inside you change
You feel joy and doubt,
Contentment and pain,
The bitterness of loss and the sweetness of gain
As solutions somehow work themselves out

In this corridor decisions count
Both when taken and later
As consequences mount
There are no victories, no defeats
No false starts, no repeats
Only the experience of life made greater.

In this corridor you go forward and remember back
Old scars heal
When new feelings take their place
Showing little behind a public face
While inside you alone can know
That like your inner thoughts, each scar is real.

The corridor of the heart leads to love
But there is a price to be paid
For its end is the sum of all decisions made
Of the anger you have felt
Or the hurt you’ve been dealt
Of all words good and bad you’ve said.

But whatever the price this corridor exacts
Through what is in your grasp
Or beyond your control
Without the sum of all its acts
Your human life would not be whole
For the corridor of the heart leads to your soul.


Kew, England  March 1998