the present

HINDSIGHT AND THE PRESENT

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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?

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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

SONG OF RENEWAL

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Once you burst the bubble,
Spare yourself the trouble;
Nothing that you do
can ever bring it back again.

The bubble had its season,
The bursting had its reason;
Their veracity’s value
Is not diminished by your pain.

The past looks real but isn’t,
The gift is in the present;
It makes you transform You -
The only goal you can truly attain.

Metamorphosis is life’s pleasure,
It’s a treasure beyond measure;
It makes you constantly renew
Your focus on your spiritual lane.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

MIND THE MOMENT

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Your time will always pass
And it will pass at a time
Least convenient to you
Just as it came at a time
Not quite expected by you
And lasted for a length of time
Unappreciated by you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

LOVE YOUR FRIENDS TODAY

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Souls stranded at sea
Search-pilots say they are ghosts
Whisping like clouds on frothing waves

But fishermen swear they are worried human faces
Who approach with one plea:
To send one last message back home

Before they vanish:
It will be well
Until we meet again.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

LOVE THOSE YOU HAVE TODAY

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

So, your enemy
Disguised as a friend
Separated you from
Your real friend, in the end.

Well, it’s all good, it’s all good
Wear not regret as a crown of thorns
Love those you have today.

What use is the morning’s advice
If you understand it only in the evening,
When it’s too late
You think?
The day is already gone

Well, it’s all good, it’s all good
Love the night too
The moon is a growing sun.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

LOVE TODAY

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When you see the future
It becomes the past
And the future becomes again
Unknown to you
To spend your life exploring your future
Is to spend your time scrutinizing your past
It is to miss all the joy and pain
The moment holds for you.

There is only one future
The result of what you do today
There is only one past
Tomorrow it will be today.
Love me today. Make a new tomorrow
Hope is my crystal ball
I see your heart aching for laughter
And laughter after laughter.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

ONCE YOU MISS IT, IT IS GONE

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

A wishing star slid across the nightsky yesterday while we all slept, it went and we missed it. A strange and beautiful, gentle, sea-creature, never before seen, surfaced briefly out of the Pacific two fullmoons ago. It stayed upon the waters for a few weeks and then disappeared again into the mysterious depths from which it came, and nobody but nobody saw it.

A new bird appeared briefly in the noonsky and vanished in the blink of an eye, and nobody saw what happened. You did not understand the tongue he spoke, and by the time you did he was already speaking another tongue, you missed it and it was gone, whatever it was he first said in that first tongue.

The moment always holds the greatest treasures, spark-lightning, flashes of pure intuition, a brief something between the eyes, and if you did not see it while it lived, you never know it ever did.

How many times? How many times, my dear? How many more times?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.