Spare The World Your Good Ideas

Spare The World Your Good Ideas

Spare the world your ideas of good
until you know all is good 
my teacher once told me.

Spare the world your ideas of right,
until you know that all is holy. 

       On November 16, 1913 Mary wrote to Kahlil "To you now, what you write and paint expresses mere fragments of your vision. Your work is not only books and pictures, they are but bits of it, your work is you. You need not "give yourself up" to your work, you are your work. Even on days you write to me that you "cannot work", you are accomplishing it, are of it, just like the days when you "can work". There is no division. Your living is all of it. Someday, your silence will be read with your writings, your absence along with your art, your darkness will be part of your light. To think these things wakes so many other things in me about you, for that future is so dear to me. It is like the resolution of greatest dissonances in music. You know the use of that word resolution in music, don't you? - so deep and so beautiful. It is like the reconciliation of life. And do you know reconciliation used in that way? To me it is one of the profoundest and fullest of our words. God bless, you my dear Kahlil, you are so near to me tonight." 

        Mary knew that all of Gibran's work (and life) was holy. She knew that his hours spent daydreaming and cloud hunting were just as important as the hours with his brushes and pens. Sometimes, it takes someone to remind us that our calling encompasses everything we do in our lives - when we tend to our families, our work, our garden, etc. we tend to what defines us as a person. Mary's words are true, Gibran's "work" encompassed only mere fragments of his vision. Like anyone else, his life and the thoughts he left behind were the golden bits. 

Heart of Life (2007), John Mayer