seeking

THE SEARCH FOE HAPPINESS

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

There is a pursuit on which we all are, a selfish or simply a personal pursuit; the pursuit of happiness. Everybody who connects with you does so in the course of their own pursuit of happiness. Once they become convinced that they cannot find happiness with you or through you, they will leave you. Don’t take it personal. Because you are also on a similar journey in your own life and in your own path.

Everything you do, everything you hope for, everybody you relate with, it is – finally – with the desire and with the expectation that you will find happiness there. Happiness is our paradise, it is our goal, it is what we all seek. The balance is to be able to find happiness without negatively impacting your physical or ethereal environment, and without unfairly and unjustly diminishing another person’s happiness as the price of yours.

But, somehow, you will still sometimes make others unhappy just to make yourself happy. It is unavoidable. And Vice versa. Because we are imperfect maturing developing beings. When they leave you, leave them too and move on, in the pursuit of your own happiness. If you seek, one day you shall find. In this life or in another, if you continue to seek happiness with a good heart and a pure mind, one day you shall happiness truly and deeply find.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

A LITTLE HAPPY EVERYDAY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes you love someone, but the person loves someone else. Or the person simply prefers a lifestyle different from the one which a life with you would have to offer them. So they choose or go after someone else who, or another path that, can offer them that lifestyle.

Being that the aim, the very aim, of life itself is Happiness, this experience of rejection cuts to the very heart of the essence of existence. The hurt can kill the soul. It makes people reappraise themselves, question their worth and even find fault in their own fundamental character. Yet, while self-examination is healthy, so also are self-love, self-understanding and self-acceptance equally necessary.

When trapped in a spiral of self-abnegation in which one no longer recognises oneself, It then becomes imperative to awaken, within one’s consciousness, a new narrative of life and of self in order to find the path to a new source of joy, as a new person. To outgrow the self-image that traps one in a cycle of pain, perhaps even to shed certain traits, and to learn to see oneself, one’s path and one’s Why with fresh new eyes. To find a new understanding of the purpose of life.

This is where the concept of never giving up comes into play. Every morning when you wake up, strive for joy. Be prepared to let go of those thoughts and those beliefs that weigh you down debilitatingly. Be ready and able every day to try a new path, a new thought, until you find the exit – and then you can take flight again.

Life is a jigsaw puzzle. Many parts fit, but many parts don’t fit also. And you have to move the pieces about in your heart and in your life continuously, often, and courageously in order to slowly put your answers together.

And, as you stride on along this way, try… try to be a little happy every day. In the end, that’s all you have. That’s all we have to share with one another. That is our humanity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

COME CLOSER

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
I don’t like to get too near to people
Because it pushes me far away from them;
When you get really close to the moon,
You see a gloomy rock, not a glowing gem.

Yet, courage!, wanderer, be bold of heart!
One who will find must seek everywhere,
Must brave the ugly to discover deep beauty
At the core of the things we love and fear.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WAY BACK HOME

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Don‘t mourn me when I die
Wave me goodbye
I will be going home

If I miss my way home
Then I will come
Back again to retry.

So don’t mourn me when I die
I did not come to stay
I came here to find my way

Back Home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRAVELLER TRUTHS

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
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

HOPE TO BE FOUND

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Line your pockets with seeds of hope
Find purpose when you secretly grope
through your hidden emotions, touch
one, touch all, no emotion is too much,
no matter how intense. The deeper
the grip, the closer it is to the reaper -
And you are the reaper of what you sow.
Empty your pockets of what you know
As you walk the road leave a flower trail
The Grail finds you if you seek the Grail.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

FRONT AND BACK

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Some will want
Wanting will be their front
Some will taunt
Taunting will be their front
Some will flaunt
Flaunting will be their front
And some will be gaunt
But it won’t be a front
It will be real, for wont
Of everything they want.
Everything they lack -
A place to call their own,
The feeling of being at home -
They want it back.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

SEEKING

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Sometimes
You need to cross the boundaries
To know the boundaries.

To lose yourself
To know yourself
When you‘re walking through hard times
working your way through your stories.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

REFLECT BEFORE CELEBRATE

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

Why was I born? Why were you born?
Into this Earth.

My birthday always makes me think. This year more than ever, I don‘t know why. The questioning thought: Everything I‘ve done in the last 48yrs, have they in any way really fulfilled the reason WHY I WAS BORN? Or have I up until now, in a deep subtle way, just been wasting my time? For I was not born in order to celebrate that birth annually. Viewed logically, that‘s a senseless feedback loop – unless augmented, nay, superseded, by a PURPOSE – and the fulfilment of that purpose – of my birth into this earth.

49 years ago, I was not here. I was not a part of this daily hustle and bustle, getting into cars and busses, voting in elections, raising kids, being earthy and doing the earthly. So, where was I? And why did I come here? Where were you before you were born? And why did you come here?

Every year the certainty that I‘m closer to my earthly death, to my departure. I just feel it, so strongly. That reduced distance. It‘s not just a piece of general knowledge that we all have: Everybody dies one day. Yes we all know this. But it is more than this. It‘s also a solid emotional perception, a physical presence that comes closer, that you can feel when you close your eyes and pay attention.

My birthday makes me think, not just of birth, but also of death.

My brother, Kwame, aged 19, died on my 21st birthday. It was a few weeks before his own 20th birthday. The person closest to me. Why did he come? Did he or did he not fulfil the purpose of it? And then he was gone again. It‘s a date we share, in life and death.

Life existed before we were born into it. It was perfect, already. Before we were created, Creation was already formed and perfect. This realisation makes me think and there is no end to this reflection. Just a clear line of perception – an intuitive perception:

You are not without a reason and not without a purpose, unless you fail – consciously or unconsciously – to discover that reason and that purpose; and then to – deliberately or instinctively – fulfil that reason and that purpose.

It‘s a serious and thought-provoking business meeting your birthday again, and still not knowing why. Or knowing if you’re fulfilling why, as best as you can. Year after year.

I don‘t need to celebrate my birthday. I need to reflect upon it.

Reflect before celebrate.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
06. April 2022

Little Che – mid 1970s.

WHERE ARE YOU?

~ Che

Where are you?

There is a song in my head
Yearning to be sung to you

There is a thirst in my Soul
Waiting to be quenched by you

There is a smile in my heart
Longing to be smiled at you

So where are you?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.