love and truth and virtue

"Anyone entrusted with power
will abuse it if not also animated
with love and truth and virtue,
no matter whether he be a prince,
or one of the people.”

So wrote Jean de la Fontaine,
a French poet over 400 years ago.

This then,
is a invitation to you
and an challenge to us all.

Animate your work
with love and truth and virtue,
Never confuse power with greatness.
if you’re doing your job right
you will never be alone
the weight of the world
is something that can be shared

The logic of Apocalypse
is in every nuclear weapon
in every bullet
in every falling forest giant
in every word uttered in malice

These semantic shortcuts
the art of euphemism
the expediency of spin
can starve the heart of meaning

Speak truth to power
calmly and clearly
even if only quietly
to yourself

Remember who you were
in your highest aspirations
if justice stirring in your heart
first drew you to politics

The only constant in history is change
so if politics is the art of the possible
if indeed, it is an art then
use your imagination
something that children have
but so often adults have lost somewhere along the way
like the ability to draw with crayons.

The love of money is a haemorrhage of the human spirit
and war is always a failure of the imagination

To make the same mistake
knowingly
is negligence
to make the same mistake
repeatedly
is insanity
or worse.

Time is a veil
something Einstein also understood experientially
how we are energy swimming in energy
you can see a slowly falling star, the sun
melt behind the hills,
into the sea
and the moon rise
its heavy smiling eye
smothering the earth with light

Make every day new
never forget
how precious this life is
cultivate
an ever-deepening awareness
of what being here
on this planet means
communication and co-creation
make at the very least
a minor contribution
to the greater good
share
laugh more,
worry less
remember to breathe
deeper
close your eyes
patterns pulse
quick and kinaesthetic
they hypnotise
mesmerise
the disparate moments of the day become
sleeping pixels in the white noise of your unconscious
somewhere a black moth with crepe paper wings circles a streetlight
a billion raindrops fall to the sea
and so
soon
the little lines
between everyone you have seen
every place you have ever been
connect