I have lived my life as if I were driving 100 mph across a desert in search of a mirage... then... a series of events that shook me to the very core of my being... a tumble that I didn't believe I would survive... Everything stopped. A dead silence... loss of direction...
In my desperate attempt to find my way, I began searching... reading... anything and everything that will help guide my way...
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem...
from Preface to Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
You shall no longer take things at second or
third hand....nor look through the eyes of
the dead, nor feed on the spectre in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them
from Song of Myself
by Walt Whitman
