What is the meaning of the poem A Man in His Life by Yehuda Amichai?

Answer 1

Men are flooded with conflicting emotions, drives, and expectations. It is famously said , that we (men) tend to compartmentalize things. We can love someone and yet feel serious attraction to someone else. We can hate someone and at the same time have such respect for them that it seems that we actually like them. Cruel and tender, persceptive and blind, cold and unreachable with a little boy's heart longing for love. In this flood of emotions it is simpler sometimes to not question the turmoil of our inner world too much. At some point we make a decision about what is right and whether it is even sensible to apply right or wrong to a given situation. There is just no time to take it all in at once all the time. So we make that decision and just go with it. Its a kind of living in the moment type of thing and as we mature, with practice we get pretty good at it.

The bad news is that by doing this we get trapped in a kind of cycle....as the poem says.... When he loses he seeks, when he findshe forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loveshe begins to forget.

his soul is seasoned, his soulis very professional.Only his body remains foreveran amateur. It tries and it misses,gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,drunk and blind in its pleasuresand its pains.