We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise?
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
- By Paul Lawrence Dunbar
We all have a past. There is a past to everybody’s Story. When we embrace the secret gift of our faults, we give Voice to our past. This Voice is the pain we have carried inside us for years without getting help. Naming this Voice and telling its story is giving Voice to our pain. This is not just a personal battle or struggle but part of the De-Niggerization of what it means to be authentically human.
“…The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes…” - Marcel Proust
