Fear of suffering

He who fears he shall suffer,
        already suffers what he fears.

                Michel de Montaigne, Essays

 

 

 

 

No kidding

One does not become fully human painlessly.

Rollo May, Foreword to Existential-Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology

 

 

 

 

A change is gonna come

You know my friends, there comes a time
when people get tired of being trampled
by the iron feet of oppression.
There comes a time my friends,
when people get tired of being plunged
across the abyss of humiliation,
where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.
There comes a time when people get tired
of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July
and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.
There comes a time.

    Martin Luther, King Jr., Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, December 1955

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.

            James Weldon Johnson 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Beyond the Bend in the Road (Para além da curva da estrada)

Beyond the bend in the road
there may be a well, a castle.
There may be simply more road.
I neither know nor ask.
As long as I’m on the road before the bend
I simply look at the road before the bend,
since I can see only the road before the bend.
It would do no good to look elsewhere
or at what I can’t see.
Let’s just concentrate on where we are.
There’s beauty enough in being here, not elsewhere.
If anyone’s there beyond the bend in the road,
let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.
That is the road, to them.
If we arrive there when we arrive we’ll know.
Now we only know that we’re not there.
Here there’s only the road before the bend, and before the bend
there’s the road with no bend at all.

        Fernando Pessoa

 

 

 

 

A different angle

Debate doesn't really change things.
It gets you bogged in deeper.
If you can address or reopen the subject with something new,
something from a different angle, then there is some hope....

            Seamus Heaney, Paris Review 1997

 

 

 

 

First requirement

Maybe truly understanding the world requires participating in it.

        James Somers, Open Mind, The New Yorker, November 2025