Throw Yourself Like A Seed

Here's a favorite poem to reflect on over the weekend by Miguel de Unamuno, the Basque poet and philosopher.    

It speaks to the resilience, discipline, and focus that every Visionmaker must gather in order to thrive in the journey to meaning.  It also instructs us about the cost of self-indulgence and drama that weakens each step that we take and adds weight to our passage from possibility to outcome.

I hope it brings you enjoyment and solace.

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;

sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate

that brushes your heel as it turns by,

the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain

which is slowly winding you in the nets of death

but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts

is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like a seed as you walk, and into your own field,

don't turn your face for that would be to turn to death,

and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,

for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;

from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.