If I Knew

If I knew what I wanted to say
I wouldn¹t speak
If I knew what I struggled to chase
I couldn¹t keep
If I knew it was the cousin of death
I wouldn¹t sleep
If I truly knew I was the best
Would I compete?
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4 responses
Great like always
can you please put all your lyrics on your website?
I feel the same but I dont know if its felt the same way!
its only feelings are important,

I enjoyed.

— Precancerous Skin Conditions
I like this poem because it provokes lots of different lines of of self-reflection. I'm thinking about the line, "If I truly knew I was the best/ Would I compete?" It makes me wonder at whether I do things to prove things to myself because I am insecure in my "knowing" or whether I do things to prove I can to other people. Sometimes we can't be confident in our assertions until they are validated by general society. It's kind of like how you might not feel truly smart until someone hands you a paper telling you you're a college graduate. I think in the end measuring your success by popularity is a mistake. If you compete and the game is set up unfairly or the winner is being assessed based on a trivial gauge of success, then it is better to not have that kind of knowledge. In that case, it would be better to be secure in your self-knowledge. But when you've been conditioned for so long to measure your worthiness based on an external standard of success, it's really hard to do that. In general though, you don't know who you are unless you compete, until you test yourself. Whether you are looking at it spiritually or from the individual perspective, life is like a trial by fire, and you can't show who you are to God and know who you are as a person unless you are tried and tested.

I've gone on for a long time. Thanks for the food for thought. You should keep going with this poem.
— svoyagegirl
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