Chasing Butterflies

Clearly my mind comes alive when I am supposed to be asleep or maybe it is just sleep depravation that brings crazy thoughts into my head, anyway here is another poem. Let me know what you think.

Chasing Butterflies

You can be anything you want to be

If only that was true

Sadly babies dying in Africa

Are not likely to ever be millionaires in Manhattan

Sadly a person cannot change where they are born

So although we might try and convince ourselves that the above statement is true

You can't always be anything you want to be

As hard as the chicken might try to fly, it has a 99% chance of falling to the ground, flat on its face

And although I might try to tell you that with a little bit of faith and determination you can get anywhere

That isn't true because anywhere, is a long way from here

At least for me the world isn't where I want it to be

But then maybe I am selfish and egotistical

But isn't everybody, isn't that how the western world gained so much control over the globe

From being selfish

Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic

After all without dreams, faith and determination

There would not have been people like Martin Luther King in this world

Who saw a vision of something better for him and everyone around him and went for it

Now isn't that beautiful

Like a flower just about to bloom, that gives us hope

Hope for change for a better world

Whatever that means to you

For I have a dream

And dreams can only become reality if you chase them

Chase them like day chases night, everlasting, never stopping

Chase after them, because even if you can only grab onto a whisper of what they give you

That is enough to keep you wanting more.

More, More the human nature of greed

The one that leads to need and wants of useless and useful things

The dozen dresses and diamond rings and the cancer cures and those such things.

If it was not for hoes, dreams and maybe a hint of greed, which is not all bad

Then we would have none of this

Isn't it a beautiful thing the complexity that is human life

From the DNA that builds our cells and bodies

to the societies that fuel and sustain our social needs

We are nothing if not strange beings

Full of love and compassion, hatred and rage

Full of paradox and mystery and filled to the brim with potential

Yes, that dreadful word that teachers use when you just aren't quite there yet.

But an incredible word none the less

Describing the point when you stand on the edge of a cliff and think

Do I jump?

Or when you decide a career change at 50, even when you have don't have the money to support it

In those moments and many more, you have potential

You are at the point of change, where just a little bit of extra effort could send you to a future you had always hoped for

So I guess all I am saying is figure out who you are and who you want to be

Because with a lot of faith and determination, maybe, just maybe you can be anything you want to be