Of Leadership

ONCE WE WERE LIGHT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Once we were light
But the world weighed us down
Drowned out our cry of resistance
And put a bandage over our eyes

A desperate cry for help
Before we fell silent
And started to look silently at our children
The way once our parents looked at us

Now we know what they were thinking:
Retain your magic! Retain your lightness!
Even as they said to us worriedly:
You have to learn to fit into the system –

Knowing it was not the way
But knowing no other way
Or knowing it but not having the heart
To push us off the cliff –

Because not everybody grows wings
When falling through the gap.
The generation gap.
Now we watch our children worriedly

Wanting them to become like us
And wanting them to stay themselves too.
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

USING SELF-CONFIDENCE

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

The most powerful thing you can give people is confidence. Self-confidence. But some people, once they have it they turn around and use it against you, who awakened it in them.

Next time, you feel like leaving people wallowing in their pitiful inferiority complex.

But a part of you still goes ahead and keeps on strengthening people who need it everywhere you meet them. What they later do with this strength and self-confidence is their business.

You have done yours.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

BOYS TO MEN

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The older I get,
The more I miss my father.
The more knowing I grow,
The more I miss him.
The more I know him.
The more I understand him.
We live life forwards,
But understand life backwards.
When it‘s too late to change anything,
That’s when we understand everything.
The young shall grow.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(I just feel like remembering today)

VULNERABILITY

~ Che

Waking up
Feeling like a wound
And for a second you don’t cover up your vulnerability
Because the world is still asleep
And no-one is watching…

You lie there, your eyes closed
Your wound open
And let your life’s troubles tear at the wound
In your Heart…
And then,
Just when the pain becomes unbearable
You feel the calming weight of responsibility
Descend like balm and bandage upon you
You know your role again
You become strong.

And by the time you open your eyes and arise
The wound has been stitched up again
And you set forth to meet the world
Unperturbed
Resolved.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

A CERTAIN NEWNESS

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

New thoughts arising in colours becoming
New paths all over, all over my path
New answers falling in patterns benumbing
New friends with old faces
New ties with old places
New visions bring a new sense of belonging
Newness and calmness out from a new bath

Of old traits are few traces
Of new veins are full vases.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.