Opposition in Transitions

A leaving pulls people to opposite ends of the house — fire rising, lake sinking — and the estrangement can feel like the truest thing about the parting. It rarely is. Estrangement corrupts sight itself: the person you're separating from starts to look like a wagonload of devils, and the bow gets drawn against what may only be grief wearing a hostile face (line 6). Look again before you loose. Don't chase what has gone distant, either — line 1's law holds through every ending: what belongs with you returns of its own accord if not hounded. Guard only your own conduct in the meantime. Let the small acts of good faith do the slow, real work that no confrontation can.

Stepping into the new chapter, you may find yourself out of step with almost everyone — the old circle who don't recognise this version of you, the new world that doesn't know you yet. Opposition here is the ordinary friction of two lives that share a threshold and cannot yet merge. Keep your individuality inside all the new fellowship (the image): you don't have to dissolve your difference to belong. Use the narrow streets (line 2) — the informal, half-chance encounters where understanding restarts without ceremony — rather than waiting for reconciliation to arrive by the proper door. And when a like-minded stranger appears in the strangeness (line 4), associate in good faith; one honest bond re-teaches you that the whole new world can be trusted.