"Your Thought and Mine" by Khalil Gibran(excerpt)

Music:
Richard Clayderman:te Amo

Excerpts from "Your Thought and Mine"
Khalil Gibran

Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition
and whose branches grow in the power of continuity.
My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into
drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way
into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky.

Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor
the lightning can shake.
My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every
direction and finds pleasure in its swaying.

Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you
nor can you change it.
My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest
of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of
the simple by the subtle ones.

My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth
with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and
build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment
with woollen and linen threads.

Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability.
Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame
and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside
notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon
the shore of eternity.

Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence.
Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads.

My thought speaks softly in my ears,"Be clean in body and spirit
even if you have nowhere to lay your head".
Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices.
Mine exhorts me to humble service.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is social science, a religious and political
dictionary. Mine is simple axiom. Your thought speaks of
the beautiful woman, the ugly, the virtuous, the prostitute,
the intelligent, and the stupid. Mine sees in every woman
a mother, a sister, or a daughter of every man.

The subjects of your thought are thieves, criminals, and
assassins. Mine declares that thieves are the creatures
of monopoly, criminals are the offspring of tyrants, and
assassins are akin to the slain.

Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.

Your thought concerns the skilled, the artist, the intellectual, the philosopher, the priest. Mine speaks of the loving and the affectionate, the sincere, the honest, the forthright, the kindly, and the martyr.

In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared.
My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are
all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist,
between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist.
Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and
tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables.
He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and
petrified objects. But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze
and clouds. Your thought is enthroned on skulls. Since you
take pride in it, you glorify it too.

My thought wanders in the obscure and distant valleys.
Your thought trumpets while you dance. Mine prefers
the anguish of death to your music and dancing.

Your thought is the thought of gossip and false pleasure.
Mine is the thought of him who is lost in his own country,
of the alien in his own nation, of the solitary among his
kinfolk and friends.
You have your thought and I have mine.