Of Change

HINDSIGHT AND THE PRESENT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

When trying to understand people’s actions in the past, always remember this: Everything people did, they always did in the present. That moment was, for them, the only real thing that was. They did not have the vantage point of hindsight which you have now, relative to that moment.

The same thing applies today. This moment now, today, right now, which for you is the realest thing there is, and which confronts you with challenges that sometimes tear you apart, or options that fill you with certainty, this moment too will one day look different when seen in retrospect through the telescopic gaze of the hindsight of others and of yourself. When the world has changed and you too have become someone else.

Just like you’re sometimes not sure today what decision you should take, that’s how those people too were not sure yesterday what decision they should make. And just like you sometimes do something now with the certainty of its rightness, that’s how they too in certainty did something which today, with hindsight, we now realise was wrong. In retrospect. Consciousness is always trapped in the present. Even the consciousness that imagines the future, has itself not left the present.

The past is only the past today. Yesterday, when it was happening, it was not the past. It was the present. And being the present it felt just as real to everybody there and then as the present feels to you right now. Certain and iron-clad. Thus, every decision that everybody makes must always be judged in the light of the time and circumstances in which it was made, in order to really understand it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

WHO ARE YOU TODAY?

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

It is better to know a person’s character than to know the person’s history. You might think that you will not know the character fully if you don’t know the history, and there might be some truth to that. However the history might obscure and distort your assumption on the present character and give you a wrong impression and make you miss the person right in front of you now. You come to understand the character by observing and experiencing the person in front of you now. That’s the most important thing. Every other information about the past that you get should be put in context with the present.

People say if you don’t know where a person is coming from you won’t understand the person. But it works both ways. For me, the present is more important. If I don’t experience, analyse, intuitively perceive and understand a person as they are now, I won’t know where they are coming from even if they tell me. Because information is not knowledge. Only experiencing and reflection, leading to recognition, is true knowledge of a person.

Knowing what I did in the past does not tell you who I am. At all. Believe me. Yes, it gives you clues, but some choices I make today will still baffle you. Because I have a free will. To really know who I am today, you have to experience and read me TODAY. Then you will also understand my past and perceive what my future might be.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

HEALING QUIETLY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
It‘s quiet inside
Grown silent in a heart
Of memories rich in restraint
A talking drum a world apart
It takes a village to raise a child
It takes a community to heal an inner child
And silence in a quiet place in your heart.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

DIFFERENTLY YOU

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

If you are different
No matter how diffident
You try to be
They will still see
That you are different.

So, do you
And be true
All the way through
Their mean or funny looks –
A dose of courage is all it takes.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ME

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I will try
to be me
And trying
to be me
Is a part
of being me.

And in trying
to be me
I have already
become me.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

COME INTO THE LIGHT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Come into the light
Here where Home is bright
Let us exchange insight
With the same intensity
With which we sometimes fight
Let Honesty be our Propensity
At the very Height
Of our Intimacy
It will feel right, it will feel so right
Without a shred of complacency.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

PRIZE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
People who try to bring you down
Will see you rise -
Their thorns will turn into your crown,
That’s your prize.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

I WANT TO GROW

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I want to grow
I want to know
What’s outside the window
Of my sorrow

I want to go
Where pain cannot follow
Too deep to flow
Too far for tomorrow

The incredible today Show
Thousandfold ecstasy and woe
Changes me into what I need to know
Ahead of tomorrow.

Many more miles to go
The first step is to sow
Hope, sow Joy, sow kindness despite sorrow
Growth is a stream, gently row.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

VICISSITUDES

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I never knew there was so much love
In the world until I was down;
I never knew there was so much hate
In the world until I wore a crown.

You just have to accept humanity the way it is;
People will surprise you with their love and their hate;
People will surprise you with betrayal and with loyalty;
A thousand changes everyday will be your fate.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHANGING CLOTHES

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
People are like clothes
Sometimes we change them

Personalities are like clothes
Sometimes we change them

Consciousnesses are like clothes
Sometimes we change them

Places are like clothes
Sometimes we change them

Inwardly and outwardly
For similar reasons

And in between changing them
We are naked.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river