Humility in midtown Manhattan

The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building.  Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration.  I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us.

Here is the poem that was created from the checkout.

We are just poor weak human beings,

Resisting the call

Because we cease and desist

our belief in all we can offer

Somehow we have created

single places upon which everything hinges

and when we are put in those spaces

we confront our smallness, see it in

perspective because none of us are

big enough to be the change others expect

and we have long stopped fooling ourselves.

To confront our own smallness is terrifying

especially when people project bigness on us –

the scale of challenge, the scope of our capability.

The I we are through other people’s eyes

is never the me we see through our own.

Know this – you have been chosen only to live.

It is never over until you leave.

the only line you ever cross

is the one you choose to draw..