Notes About The Poem
" INTROSPECTION " MY PHOTO, ©
The Real Me
I was put on the road of life without my consent.
I was not conscious of who I was or of what I had to do, and
What direction should I go.
I was just asked to follow in the footsteps of my predecessors who:
Dressed me the way they were dressed
Baptized me into their religion, and taught me,
Their language
Their history
Their tradition, and
Their culture.
On the way, they also indicated to me
Whom to trust and whom not to trust
Who my friends and my enemies were
Whom I should love and whom to hate
Thus
Before I became an adult and formed my own opinion about
The nature of persons and things
I had already become one of them.
Growing older, though, and being educated under different systems,
I started questioning the correctness of the values and ideas with which
I was brought up,
Thus
I asked myself:
Was my religion, really "my " religion?
Were my enemies, really "my" enemies?
Where my friends, really "my" friends?
Where my values, really " my" values?
Where my ideas, really ''my " ideas?
If they were, then there was no problem,
But
If there were not, then who was I?
Who was the real me?
To give answers to these questions, I had to reinvent myself,
I had to see myself, not through the prism of their:
Education,
Religion,
History,
Tradition and culture,
But
Through my own prism
The newly discovered prism of my "pure" self,
The self that was liberated from all prejudices of the past.
The self that saw the world I lived in under a new light of
Understanding
The light of my universal self,
The self that didn't belong to a race, a creed, or a nation,
But
To humanity, to love, to the universal brotherhood, and to God.
To achieve this, though
I had to put myself in parentheses.
A parenthesis that helped me withhold, for some time, all my judgments
Till I decided what ideas I will accept and what ideas I will refuse,
Whom I will trust and whom I will mistrust
Whom I will love and whom I will hate.
When this introspection and reevaluation were completed
Then and only then, I was able to present myself to the world
Then and only then, I was able to shout at the top of my voice:
"Here I am, my brothers, my sisters, this is the real me!"
© Demetrios Trifiatis
19 May 2021
* I would like to share the honor of POTD with all my friends who are kind enough to visit and comment on my poetry. I also thank the officials of PoetrySoup who have the difficult task to choose among so many worthy poems the POTD. Blessings.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment