After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul…

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child

And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure that you really are strong and that you really do have worth,

And you learn and you learn with every goodbye you learn…

©1971 Veronica Shoffstall

After A While, You Stop Looking Outside Yourself

There’s a certain kind of truth that only arrives after life has had a few chances to humble you.

Not in a harsh way. Not all at once. Yet slowly, through small disappointments, unexpected endings and those quiet moments where you realise something you believed no longer holds up.

That’s what After A While by Veronica Shoffstall feels like.

It doesn’t try to impress you. It doesn’t try to inspire you in a loud, dramatic way. Instead, it sits beside you and gently points out what you’ve probably already started to notice.

That some of the things you once believed about love, security and happiness were never quite as solid as they seemed.

The Difference Between Love and Weight

One of the most striking ideas in the poem is the difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

At first, most people don’t notice when that line gets crossed.

Care can feel like closeness. Closeness can quietly turn into dependence. Then before you realise it, something that once felt comforting starts to feel heavy.

You might have experienced it yourself. A relationship where you felt responsible for someone else’s happiness or where they felt responsible for yours can feel meaningful at the time. It can even feel like love. Yet over time, it becomes exhausting.

Real love doesn’t work like that. It supports. It allows space. It doesn’t need to control or be controlled to feel secure. It stands beside you, not on top of you.

That is not something most people are taught. It is something most people learn the hard way.

Why People Can’t Be Your Foundation

There’s a quiet truth in the line that company doesn’t mean security. It sounds simple. Yet it challenges something deep.

Many of us, at some point, look for stability in another person. Someone to lean on. Someone to make things feel certain. Someone to fill the spaces that feel uncertain inside.

It’s understandable. Yet it doesn’t hold up over time.

People change. Circumstances shift. Even strong relationships evolve. When your sense of security is built entirely on someone else, it becomes fragile without you even noticing.

That’s why life eventually nudges you in a different direction.

Not to become distant. Not to stop caring. Yet to begin building something more stable within yourself.

A quiet confidence that says, “I will be okay, regardless”.

When Gestures Don’t Mean What You Thought

“Kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises”.

That line has a way of bringing everything back down to earth. It reminds you not to build a future out of moments.

A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, a beautiful experience, these things matter. They should be appreciated. Yet they are still just moments.

Problems begin when we attach long term meaning to short term expressions.

When we assume that how someone shows up today guarantees how they will show up tomorrow.

Growth begins when you start seeing things more clearly. Not with cynicism. Yet with grounded awareness.

Learning to Stand After You Fall

There’s a quiet strength in the part about accepting defeat with your head up and your eyes ahead.

It doesn’t deny disappointment. It doesn’t pretend things didn’t matter. It simply refuses to let those experiences define you.

There is a difference between feeling something and being consumed by it.

At first, most people don’t know that difference. They take setbacks personally. They internalise failure. They carry it forward.

Then slowly, something shifts. You realise that you can feel the weight of something without letting it collapse you.

You can acknowledge what happened, learn from it and keep moving.

That is where resilience begins.

Why Today Matters More Than Tomorrow

The idea of building your roads on today becomes more meaningful the older you get.

It’s easy to live in the future. To plan. To hope. To worry. To imagine that everything will come together at some later point.

Yet tomorrow is uncertain in ways we don’t always acknowledge.

Plans change. Circumstances shift. Things fall apart and come together again in ways we can’t predict.

Today, however, is solid. It’s where your choices exist, it’s where your habits form and where your life is actually being lived.

When you begin focusing more on what you can do now, something interesting happens.

Life starts to feel more stable, not because everything is certain, yet because you are no longer depending on certainty.

Planting Your Own Garden

This is where the poem becomes deeply personal.

“So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers”.

It’s a simple image. Yet it carries a profound shift.

Waiting for someone else to bring you flowers means your happiness depends on their actions. Planting your own garden changes that completely.

It means creating your own sense of fulfilment and taking responsibility for your emotional world. It means finding ways to bring meaning into your life that don’t rely on someone else showing up in a specific way.

This doesn’t make relationships less important. It makes them healthier because now they are shared, not depended on.

What You Learn, Slowly and Surely

Over time, all of this begins to settle into something steady.

You realise you can endure more than you thought.

You recognise a strength that didn’t come from perfect circumstances, yet from navigating imperfect ones.

You begin to understand that your worth isn’t something that needs to be proven or validated externally.

Perhaps most importantly, you start to see that every goodbye carries a lesson. Not always immediately. Sometimes only in hindsight. Yet always something.

That’s why the final line feels so real. You learn and you learn and with every goodbye, you learn.

Not all at once.

Yet enough to keep moving forward with a little more clarity each time.

If you enjoyed this poem, you might also really like the My Law poem written by Tieme Ranapiri (translated from Maori by Kaumātua Kere Graham).

I think you’ll also like reading this special letter (a note for everybody)

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Hi, I'm Thea Westra at Forward Steps (forwardstepsblog.com)

Since March 2003, I've been sharing practical, positive, thought provoking and inspiring self improvement content online. My aim is simple - to offer tips and resources that help us enhance our daily experience of life and to keep stepping forward. Perth, Western Australia is the place I call home and I'm the author of "Time For My Life: 365 Stepping Stones". You might also know me from the Forward Steps personal development blog and the daily series of "365 Forward Steps Notes", all designed to add wings to our unique life journeys.

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