Morning Meditations and Life Goals

It's the rain. It's the joy of deeply held and lasting friendships. It's the blessing of a most beloved, patient and supportive family. It's the oddness of holding energy around the possibility of someone, who does not hold you in the same regard, and the courage to accept the unrequited feelings and the effort to release that energy. It's the humility of not being chosen first coupled with the gratitude of being included anyway. It's the excitement around upcoming work. It's the hope radiating around a career opportunity of a lifetime. It's that I'm in the dream stages of writing a new play. 

These are my morning meditations and life goals:

• To be a better me today than I was yesterday. 
• To grant myself humility in neglect, grace in achievements and compassion when facing challenges. 
• To be of service to other theatre artists and students.
• To deepen my knowledge, sense of joy and wonder, and and capacity for love. 
• To write beautiful plays.

And then there's the richness, power, and awe of this ... when poets, freedom fighters, and revolutionaries dance.

Writing legends Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou dance in the atrium of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, over the interred ashes of Langston Hughes. Highlighting the ancient African rite of ancestral return, on top of the tiled artwork titled, Rivers. Others poured ceremonial drinks from five rivers and read four poems of Langston Hughes. (Feb. 22, 1991) Photo by Chester Higgins, Jr./The New York Times.