The heart of change lies in
Listening
Seeing
Smelling
Sensing
The truth of our lives together
Listening
To needs we hardly whisper about
And to hurts we carefully conceal
While secretly dreaming of
The way our hands and feet
Our minds and hearts
Might have moved in our lifetime
Had they not been fettered since birth.
Change lies in
Absorbing the rage
Of being muzzled
The pain of
Never having been seen
The way we are.
Like birds having misplaced
Their sense of direction
We now look
For a place to
Call home.
You might say.
Change has to do
With things like politics
And economics
And social activism
And wars and the rules of
Trade and commerce.
Global currents
And all kinds of super complicated things which
Only a few special people are capable of grasping
As such
Who feel they should rule our lives.
But
How can a fresh breeze be set in motion
By a politician who refuses to see
Or an economist who has stopped smelling or tasting
Anything other than the theories he lives with
Or a social activist
Rushing around, to meet the needs of people whose
Innermost cravings he is afraid to sense.
I decided a long time back.
I don’t want to be an activist
I don’t want to be a politician
I don’t want to be an executive in an important organization
I don’t even want to be a writer or a poet any more
Which I once thought I did.
The list is too long
Of cravings left behind.
For what I want,
I realize now, has no name
Or form that I can convey to you with ease
In words or pictures that will make sense.
So maybe
You need
To stop by for a while and
Listen to me
And let me also, listen to you.
Maybe
We need
To slow down for a moment
So you can feel me
And let me get a feel of you
To get closer to me and let me share your space
Even as I prepare for you
To enter my own.
Cautiously
Respectfully
Tenderly
With love
Respecting the nature
Of our existence on earth.
So that for a brief while
I can get under your skin
And you too, know what it is like
To be me
And we both stay with each other
Long enough to know
That it is for ourselves we
Essentially live –
Which means we
Live for each other.
Uma Ranganathan
January 2006