PROSE POEM: WAKE UP—STOP SLEEPING WITH YOUR EYES WIDE OPEN

photo by Alex Lear

 

Wake up—stop sleeping with your eyes wide open

 

I lead not merely by leading but going beyond myself by teaching, encouraging and inspiring others to lead. I go where I have never been not with my own feet but a part of me will be carried along into the experiences of others. I am not the end of my ambitions, I am not the beginning of my dreams. At my best I am the continuance of those who came before and a foundation for those who come after, a calendar of feelings. Isn’t it odd that our long march into the future is how we make our past, isn’t it normal for an old person to see themselves in the young eyes of students struggling to successfully become old? What I have to tell you is that it is not the future you have to worry about, we can only be true to today, be beautiful right now, and, yes, that is my task, to teach the future how to be fully the present.

 

interpretation of plato, paragraphs 54 – 55

 

—kalamu ya salaam