PARALLEL UNIVERSES

When a person just doesn’t know how to tell you the truth, they simply stick to the lie. From start to finish. Even if they want to tell you the truth, they don’t know how to, they don’t know where to start because the truth runs on a completely different storyline and separate lifestyle, opposite reality and parallel universe. It will hurt you deeply and completely overturn your view of life and of them. Or so the person thinks. But if only they would try you, to see a new person emerge and a new powerful authentic relationship form.

Starting with a lie is always a slippery slope, a rollercoaster ride. It is nervousness and heart palpitations from start to finish. It can be exciting and exhilarating, until it becomes human and personal. Then it becomes a chore, a nightmare, a heavy load, and a puzzling sphinx, a difficult riddle to solve. Tell the truth and shatter the other person’s reality? Or maintain the lie and allow it to eat you inside and gnaw at the other person’s gut instincts, and prevent both of you from ever forming a true bond? And yet, only the truth liberates.

There will be a humanity one day of honest human spirits who live, share and relate in the light of truth always and in all things. Deeply and simply. Inside and out. Individually and as a society. The most fundamental truth we owe ourselves as human beings is the truth of how we really are as a person. This is the basis of all relationships and of society and of a possibility to one day have a reflection of Paradise on Earth. A home away from Home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

IT IS WHY WE LIVE

It doesn’t matter who broke your heart
Or how badly they broke it.
It doesn’t matter how much it hurt.
When the new one comes,
Love again. And love HARDER.

Once you set off, don’t look back.
Pain is not and is never our master.
Joy and love lie always ahead -
Fall forward. It is why we live
With the fullness of our heart always to give.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BE HONEST WITH PEOPLE UPFRONT

Be honest with people upfront. Because they are giving you their all, hoping you will accept it and believing you are the one. If you know you are not available for them or they are not what you seek, don’t let them plant their garden in your backyard and enjoy their fruits for a while before brutally uprooting them when you’ve had enough, or when they now want to enter the house, or when the one or thing you really want shows up. You cause a deep pain in the universe and open a wound in their hearts that will bleed for lifetimes thereafter. Be honest with people upfront. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t say things you don’t mean or that aren’t REALLY real. If it’s not what you really want or if you’re not really sure, say it truthfully, keep your distance or break it off at once. You will gain a friend, and respect, for life, down the line.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

THE POWER IN THE COURAGE TO BE TRUTHFUL

Truth is so powerful. There is almost nothing
That you cannot forgive a truthful person.
It’s a strange phenomenon. What is hurting
You is healing you, is teaching you a lesson.
Even while suffering, you can’t stop trusting.

Something about them awakens respect in us.
Truthful people fascinate the coward in us,
Inspire the warrior in us, touch the human in us.
In the depth of their sin, yet they carry the cross.
Even at their worst, they’re still the best of us.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE BEST OPPORTUNITIES

Why don’t people take opportunities
When they come?
Most especially those opportunities
That come from
The heart and appeal to the sixth sense
And, if grasped, lead us back to the essence
Of the purpose of being human and fulfilled.
A happiness, a love, heartfelt and God-willed.
The best opportunities
Don’t make us wealthy.
The best opportunities
Make us happy.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRAVELLER TRUTHS

The Truth can only be found
By those who are seeking it
A mistake can only be learned from
By those who are making it
Full exposure is only feared
By those who are faking it
A road can only be understood
By those who are taking it
The Truth can only be echoed
By those who are speaking it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

THE NEXT STEP

Don‘t give up because the first step was not perfect and the critics have only zoomed in on the weak areas.

Rejoice because you took the first step at all and your journey has now started.

Rejoice because you know what you did right and what you did wrong, so you know what to work on and what to improve.

Rejoice because you have feedback and critics and cheerleaders.

Rejoice because you have the one thing that everybody wants, but only few possess – Courage.

It is courage that gets to distant goals, not criticism. Because courage has legs and is very restless. And the only thing that makes courage happy, and satisfies courage, is movement; is overcoming challenges.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

DO IT QUICKLY

That feeling that you‘ve gone down a path before and seen the outcome… And now you‘re watching others go down that same path.

And you know that no amount of warning or explanation will make them stop going that way. The only thing that can help is the recognition that comes at the end, when everything is over and it‘s too late to change anything. But then, just the bequeathing of this recognition is also what is needed too.

So, instead of preaching to them to not go that path, you start to wish them the opposite: that they go it QUICKLY, and get to the end quickly, so that they can come to the recognition sooner than later.

Just like Jesus Christ said to Judas: „That which you are about to do – do it quickly!“

Sometimes, a Fall is the fastest way to Rise Up!

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HEY, I’M HUMAN!

They say I make enemies on all sides. Sycophancy and hypocrisy seem to be the price of friendship and group play in a civilized, polished world gone corporate. Living analog authenticity has been replaced by plastic digital superficial smoothness. Personality is dead; long live the System.

But I refuse to be the servant of a System that serves only itself and not the human in me. Being myself is not suicide; surrendering to the System is the real suicide. Being myself is birth, is life.

Don’t kill yourself. Resist. Be it education, be it politics, be it diplomacy, be it the corporate world, be it religion, be it organised Sport – they all demand one thing: the compromise and capitulation of the true human being. The human Spirit. Thwart their plan. Resist!

In every aspect of life, deep in the fabric of our group existence, we have to change the System. And it starts when the individual human being comes back to life. Until you know yourself, you won’t know your real friends. They may be many more than you think, but you don’t know and they don’t know – because you are all afraid to be the first to drop the mask and say:

“Hey, I’m human! Are you?”

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

HAPPY PEOPLE

If you’re mad, and you know you’re mad, are you mad?
If you’re in heaven, and you’re not happy, are you in heaven?
If you have everything, and you’re empty, do you have anything?
If you have nothing, and you’re full, do you have nothing?

What’s the point in being able to explain the Laws of God to everybody, if you lack the courage to live the paths that will reveal yourself to you.

Some people have the courage to show you God, but they don’t have the courage to show you themselves. It is not God that is shrouded in strange mystery, it is the human being.

Don’t tell me about God – you can’t. Tell me about yourself. Show me who you really are. That’s difficult enough. But that’s the knowledge we reciprocally need, between and amongst ourselves, in order to be able to live happily with one another.

And happy coexistence, as ourselves, with ourselves: that is our Paradise.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.