past

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

CHALLENGE OF THE PRESENT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
When they were living
It was for them not the past;
Now that we are living
It is for us also not the past.

It is always the present -
And it always feels the same;
For some it feels like the end,
For others like the start, of the game.

The future will one day look back
And call our present their past -
But their present too will hold them back
With the same challenges of the past.

It always demands bravery
Without the benefit of hindsight;
To act without knowing if posterity
Will prove you wrong or right.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRANSIENCE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
You cannot reproduce the past
What is gone is gone
The present was never built to last
A moment later, it is done.
Over and done with.
All that’s left to reminisce on
Will be legend and myth.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

AI CANNOT SATISFY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
AI
Cannot satisfy
The longing for reality
The thirst for humanity
It can only replicate duplicate
Reiterate concentrate elucidate
Our past in all its profusion
The sum of all our confusion
Neatly packaged in a way
That appeals to our Today
But it will not give us anything new.
The future is still the spirit’s purview.
If we want the new then we must
Do what we have in the past
Always done to grow: Let go of the past.
Raising the intuition above the intellect
We much reach deep within our depths
And pull the new out from ourselves
Because there is a magic that flows from Above
Into our Intuition, our secret treasure trove.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BEFORE YOU

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
You always think you’re the first
When you are young,
How startling it is when you grow up
To realise you were wrong.

So many people before you
Have these same heights traversed -
Some recorded, many unrecorded,
Their stories long dispersed.

Tread the earth with humility,
O modern day human;
Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids
Transcend our acumen.

And when you are still young,
Be thankful as you add new value,
For you’re building on the foundation
Of all that came before you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BEYOND A.I.

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Now that A.I. has mirrored our past
the past has become boring -
We need a new humanity at last
with basic new senses for exploring
a future that in a different context is cast,
less artificial, less vain, less deploring,
more human, simple, more steadfast
at peace-making, tired of warring,
free from materialism’s comfort ballast,
our inner mobility restoring.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

PRESENT BE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The present always becomes the distant past. When Martin Luther put up the 95 theses, that was for him in the present. For us today it is the distant past. When Judas betrayed Jesus, for him that was the present; for us today it is in the distant past. When the artisans at Igbo-Ukwu or in Nok made their bronzes, that was for them the present, the most modern moment they knew. They could have never guessed what the future would be. But for us today, their present is the distant distant past.
Even such is time.
Today will one day be the past, the distant past, and be forgotten. Another day will be the present. Everyday another day. Only the present matters. The present is the only thing that Really IS.
Live in the present, from day to day.
Move with the present, from day today.
BE the present, every day.
Be present in every moment.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

FOREVER IS A LAND OF GOODBYES

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

One of the most beautiful things
I have found
Is to be able to let go of the past
And move on –
But never forget the past.

I love every pain
Every joy
Every regret and remorse
Every parting and every loss
Every victory and every memory

For by the very act of going
They left something with me
That will live in me forever…
Forever is a land of goodbyes
And new beginnings.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

TOMORROW CAME YESTERDAY

~ Che

Every new day is the future
you’ve been waiting for.
So, all those things you’ve made a vow
to do in the future,
do them now.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

ART IN ALL ITS FORMS

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

Art in all its forms
Is the thief of time
Stealing from the past
Sharing with the present
And the future
Like Robin Hood
For time is wealthy in memory
And, like Shylock, reluctant to give.

An evening song will reawaken your life’s morning
A painting will view like déjà vu from lives unremembered
And a poem will whisper your life’s story back to you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.