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Where Are You Going?
Never avert your eyes.
“White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this — which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never — the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
“Letter from a Region of My Mind” in The New Yorker (17 November 1962)
Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
The Fire Next Time (1963)
— James Baldwin
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“To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.”
~ Akira Kurosawa
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“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling…
