Poem+in+Five+Chapters+By+Portia+Nelson

Portia Nelson is conveying to us through __Poem in Five Chapters__ the resistance to change that everyone shares. When confronted with the choice of repeating what you have done in the past, well aware of any mistake made in doing it before, or trying the unknown, for many people their initial decision is going to be first one. This poem is about how all the time people are repeating their own mistakes simply because it is something they can depend on in an otherwise undependable world. Yet by the last chapter the speaker does what they know to be the right thing to do: to "walk down another street" in life, leaving behind their mistakes and doing the unknown, an act of courage.