Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mutability

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. We rest. -A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise. -One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same! -For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free: Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutablilty.

There are a few poems that speak to me in times of doubt and struggle.  This is one of them.  It's usually when I come back from weekends like this last one and I can see how life moves and changes around us.  I wonder if I am moving and changing with it.  Am I growing, improving, moving forward as I should? 

I see my friends lives and I wonder if I am a healthy person.  Not just physically, but mentally and socially.  Am I making the right choices?  Am I a successful adult?  What defines those terms?