If-

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

They matter, We matter, You matter.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” 

-African Proverb

I do not know your pain, but I know mine. Words are my medium of expression, so I write and I tell my story, a story not fully formed and highly flawed but, I write. Last night I decided to do a thing I have not done in a while, to write in my journal. I love to write, obviously but, I don’t always give myself the time, I steal from my own self... 

Okay; I’m digressing, the journal, so after writing I came to discover that my journal entry was covered by the word “I”. I this, I that, I am, I have been, I, I, I. To find that I have consumed my whole life with myself, was a sobering moment for me. It is a simple fact that there is more to life than me. to ask another how are you doing, what is going on in your life, is not a difficult thing not even an obligation but, I believe that the care extended to another human being is Greatness. I never really thought that before but, today I do. 

I have become the center of my own universe as if  the world moves around an axis called me. I like to l think of myself (of course thinking about myself again) as a rather intelligent person, but at the hands of my self-obsession I have become stupid. Missing the lives that inhabit this earth so that I can focus on me I do, yet that is not what should be done.

Introspection is a journey of greatness, it's the stuff that makes us better people, people who understand the value in another human. There is more to life than me that more is you. I don’t even have to try but, switch on my phone to discover that today is a friend’s birthday. it would be yet another folly to take the stance that I do not matter and you first. What I do say is that my life should not just be me it should be you too. Last week I wrote on #blacklivesmatter I am still awed by what people had to say, even more, I am deeply touched by the deep emotions people feel about racism. living lives in isolation, it is comfortable, tranquil even yet to me never truly fulfilling.

Open your heart to hear what people have to say choose to ask difficult questions, in respect. how else will we grow, the people who surround us are not an ornament to abuse but, treasure and love. I admit right now I often forget to see people I walk by like they are merely walls I pass.

The human life is worth dying for and it's definitely worth living for, if only I could remind myself of that every morning, my life would be different but, even more, the lives of the people around me would be different. The I must die.