THE MEDICINE IN WISE WORDS

THE MEDICINE IN WISE WORDS

One of the habits that I have endeavored to keep in me is reading great stuff. Reading supplies the brain with wit and exorcises stupidity. Of the hobbies that I have developed is writing. Why have knowledge when it cannot reach as many people as possible?

Of all hundreds of poems I have read, three of them overwhelm me. Forget about those fake ones about "love" written by minds smitten by adolescent tantrums. I talk about wise stuff written by real men and women.

The now aging Marjorie Oludhe McGoye wrote "ATIENO YO!" which flows masterfully but leaves heavy punches on oppressive employers. The other poem I read and re-read is Robert Frost's "THE ROAD NOT TAKEN" which has heavy lessons for life. But one that boils me in a pot of inspiration is Ruyald Kipling's poem "IF"

The poet asserts,

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
THEN
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

THAT IS WHY SOME WRITER APTLY INTERJECTED, "MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON WISE WORDS FROM WITTY BRAINS"