It was a discretionary tale of humbleness, a precipice of love that could not be easily explained, only examined beneath the lens of the psychiatrist, as if the heart itself had been placed in a straitjacket to prove the severity of the matter.
When told to be silent, the screams came lashing through the echo chambers of the throat.
Years inside the concrete jungle will do that. Concrete begins to fall like rain in the forest, the Amazon forest, to be exact. The world, when first approached, seemed caught in the tailwind of illusory folklore, its own Jezebel seated at the behest of oligarchies. Today’s favorite mistress. Tomorrow’s trash. Used up and offered as a damning tribute to what it means to be second best.
There is a particular kind of truth that arrives too late.
You can be lying in a hospital bed after enduring a stroke, calling for help, and the very person who promised you the best can still say, “I wish you well, but I must attend to what comes first.”
Thank you for showing me the honest truth.
A day late and a dollar short, but honest nonetheless.
It becomes evident in the treaties, legislations, and alliances we sign. We show up dressed for the rehearsal beautifully for CNN, Foreign Affairs, and the national news. We smile for the photograph. We shake hands beneath polished lights. We call it commitment. Yet sometimes it is only paper. A pose. A ceremony without devotion.
As the late Kofi Annan illuminated, to live is to choose, and to choose well, one must know who they are, what they stand for, where they want to go, and why they want to get there.
That is the part we keep forgetting.
The calm waters ask for another level of introspection. How do we smile while signing peace treaties when the affairs in our own homes are in complete disarray? How do we preach unity abroad while refusing tenderness at the table? It is the oldest contradiction: do what I say, but do not examine what I do.
It makes me think of Maya Angelou, who reminded us that we delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely acknowledge the changes it has undergone to achieve that beauty. We admire the wings, but not the breaking. We applaud the flight, but not the confinement that came before it.
And Joan Didion knew something sacred when she wrote that we tell ourselves stories to live. The question is not whether we tell stories. We all do. The question is whether the stories we tell help us grow or help us evade the truth.
Because we can craft narratives that make us feel righteous, innocent, and misunderstood, while refusing to sit with the intricacies that should have transformed us. We can turn pain into performance, memory into defense, and commitment into a photograph.
But a bird knows better.
A bird flies, lets go, pauses, returns, and still learns from every place it lands.
Maybe vitality is found there, in knowing what to leave and what to remain faithful to. Didion captured this with precision: “You have to pick the places you do not walk away from.”
And with that, one begins to look at the self, the group, and the nation more acutely.
So as we part, let this become a time of reflection. Let it become introspection. Let it illuminate the soul toward transformation, so we do not succumb to the nearest straitjacket simply because we have forgotten the realness of human touch, communication, and engagement.
We live in a society where too many people, young and old, wake up lonely, sad, despondent, and physically undone. Strokes. Heart attacks. Ailments of the body that may have carried years of silence, disconnection, and abandonment. Some wounds become medical because they were never allowed to be relational.
And what is true for the body is true for society.
We sign treaties. We forge alliances. We hold up a piece of paper like a marriage license. But the question remains: are we actively engaged, or are we passive bystanders holding a document for the photographer? Are we committed, or simply performing commitment for Instagram and TikTok?
Where is the authentic connection?
Where is the hand that stays?
Where is the conversation that does not disappear when the room becomes uncomfortable?
So good night, and good luck.
I will be here, listening to Coltrane and Duke Ellington’s “ Sentimental Mood,” thinking about the strange discipline of memory, the ache of human contradiction, and the quiet dignity of choosing not to walk away from what still deserves our care.
© 2026 Sherley Delia. All rights reserved.
Healing Majestically 