“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Walt Whitman has been cited by many the poet and dreamer to offer advice for the future as he encouraged us to "Sound your barbaric yawp." And he encouraged us not to doubt or second guess or regret, but to live. And if people challenged us, he reminded them,""Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large - I contain multitudes."
2 comments:
This is what i do; Take nothing for granted, look for beauty and peace in the nearly incomprehensible complexity of everything, view wealth as a capacity to provide, seek wisdom from the unique and strange,oppose anything standing in he way of human progression and reformation be it fouled leaders or systems or habits, realize "humanity" is only a will of self preservation and a capacity to learn and that every human life is valuable and worth saving, cauterize any wound to the soul, and i am a functional cell in awesome terra.
Nice procrastination project....
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