In fact everyone
transacts some small form of harm.
Vegetarians
who quest to never ingest
animal flesh can’t presume
to achieve total
compliance of ahimsa’s
defiance of harm
afflicted upon other
life forms that then must be morned.
I must confess I’m
omnivorous and thus I’m
conscious to address
that my best effort is to
control how, and how much, I
need to injure in
my fervor to sustain my
safe passage through Life.
[Shey]
So, since you’ve managed to gain
great skill to exert your will
over those who would
defy your wish, if they could,
aren’t you a bully
to fully impose your way
without any say they’d plea?
[Grace]
Mother, you know that,
although I’ve gained such power,
I restrain my use.
[Shey]
Therefore ought you to forgo
judgement on my commitment
to develop my
needed skills to protect and
to serve the public
from chronic pervaders of
antisocial commotion
dressed up in deceits,
flattery, and flat out lies
that connive to thrive
off of others’ good will to
defeat caring in the streets?
Motivational
purpose is the defining
key that will decree
situational ethics’
determination between
the act of killing
or murder’s provocation.
A bat’s use to play
baseball on bright sunny days
displays a yearning for fun,
yet baseball bats turn
into clubs wielded on cracked
skulls to yield murder.
Self-determination bodes
loads of strong self-reliance.
Yet neither can be
achieved without self-defense
to dispense your self
protection that, if lethal
and justifiable, won’t
be a conviction
of murder and no further
action is needed.
You, Grace, are on a quick pace
to leave your innocence and
replace your childhood
naïveté to portray
a young woman’s goal
to extol the role to see
a thing for what it is and
nothing more, nothing
less, but remembering that
there always exists
Wonder and Mystery that
resists human omniscience.
Grace, you have learned much
and you have good common sense
but in your system
to gain more wisdom, you need
to heed flexibility
to free yourself from
your moral exactitude’s
crude and rude display.
Learning is a plethora
of mistakes to be made like
fabled Pandora’s
curiosity that freed
diverse evils’ curse
making matters worse for us
who must fuss over ways to
behave much better
than following the letter
of imperfect law.
Ultimately gaining one’s
self-actualization
relies upon one’s
strong self-determination
that is rooted in
one’s forceful self-reliance
and robust self-discipline,
none of which exists
without self-defense dispensed
to dispel all threats.
Marlene, as you have seen, likes
to intervene easily
without any need
to be apologetic
for her quick viewpoints
that wick through the cracks and small
crevices of friendly talk
that is her hallmark.
She took opportunity
to baffle me and
to hassle my certainty
concerning reality
that we all express
blindly, unknowingly of
what we speak daily.
“Shey,” she said, “the pronoun ‘I‘
means ‘myself‘ while ‘we‘ seems
to be ‘ourselves‘
together, different from
‘theirselves‘ tethered to
the pronoun, ‘them‘ to hem in
a collective of selves grouped,
bound, around a trait
that defines their selves
begging a simple question:
What actually is the
core ‘self’ of which we all speak?”
It seems to me, Grace,
that we have a sense of self
void of true grasping.
[Grace]
It was a Greek hand that etched
Apollo’s command upon
Delphi’s sacred stones
in five, forty B C to
heed well: “know thyself.”
Many centuries after,
Emerson’s words fell upon
the page to transfer
his wisdom to stir youthful
hearts of bold scholars
encouraged to meet their quest
with finessed self-reliance
exuding from their
shared belief “that what is true
in their private heart
is true for all, to commend
each with true genus,” a coup
for insightful thought
that ought not to be dismissed
as self platitudes.
Sense of self is a presence
void of all tangible form.
Consider it an
unseen, shimmering essence
floating, filling space,
the glue that creates my self.
And, this is what I defend?
[Shey]
To comprehend more
you must accompany me
to Stewardship’s Soup.