eudemonia
still searching
I have really been re-discovering the beauty and contribution of the arts recently. To starved souls the arts can open up vistas and possibilities that we often do not allow ourselves to imagine. So here is a poem for starved souls. Feast on it and post your reactions if you like.
Mental Flight by Ben Okri
What will we choose?
Will we allow ourselves to descend
Into universal chaos and darkness?
A world without hope, without wholeness
Without moorings, without light
Without possibility of mental fight,
A world breeding mass murderers
Energy vampires, serial killers
With minds pining in anomie and amorality
With murder, rape, genocide as normality?
Or will we allow ourselves merely to drift
Into an era of more of the same
An era drained of significance, without shame,
Without wonder or excitement,
Just the same low-grade entertainment,
An era boring and predictable
‘Flat, stale, weary and unprofitable’
In which we drift
In which we drift along
Too bored and passive to care
About what strange realities rear
Their heads in our days and nights,
Till we wake too late to the death of our rights
Too late to do anything
Too late for thinking
About what we have allowed
To take over our lives
While we cruised along in casual flight
Mildly indifferent to storm or sunlight?
Or might we choose to make
This time a waking up event
A moment of world empowerment?
To pledge, in private, to be more aware
More playful, more tolerant, and more fair
More responsible, more wild, more loving
Awake to our unsuspected powers, more amazing.
We rise or fall by the choice we make
It all depends on the road we take
And the choice and the road each depend
On the light that we have, this light we bend,
On the light we use
Or refuse
On the lies we live by
And from which we die.
Extract taken from Wheatley, M (2002) Turning to One Another. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler.
Mental Flight by Ben Okri
What will we choose?
Will we allow ourselves to descend
Into universal chaos and darkness?
A world without hope, without wholeness
Without moorings, without light
Without possibility of mental fight,
A world breeding mass murderers
Energy vampires, serial killers
With minds pining in anomie and amorality
With murder, rape, genocide as normality?
Or will we allow ourselves merely to drift
Into an era of more of the same
An era drained of significance, without shame,
Without wonder or excitement,
Just the same low-grade entertainment,
An era boring and predictable
‘Flat, stale, weary and unprofitable’
In which we drift
In which we drift along
Too bored and passive to care
About what strange realities rear
Their heads in our days and nights,
Till we wake too late to the death of our rights
Too late to do anything
Too late for thinking
About what we have allowed
To take over our lives
While we cruised along in casual flight
Mildly indifferent to storm or sunlight?
Or might we choose to make
This time a waking up event
A moment of world empowerment?
To pledge, in private, to be more aware
More playful, more tolerant, and more fair
More responsible, more wild, more loving
Awake to our unsuspected powers, more amazing.
We rise or fall by the choice we make
It all depends on the road we take
And the choice and the road each depend
On the light that we have, this light we bend,
On the light we use
Or refuse
On the lies we live by
And from which we die.
Extract taken from Wheatley, M (2002) Turning to One Another. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler.
