THE WAY

for Nicholas Maxwell

    What is the rightful way to live your life
    To realize the promise of your birth,
    Averting moral perils, ever rife,
    While manifesting your essential worth?

    What is of value to yourself and others
    Is what our lives are meant to realize;
    Respecting all as sisters and as brothers
    While helping life to thrive is to be wise.

    What then are your potentials, your true gifts,
    Natural endowments still to be unfurled?
    Observe where your attention fondly drifts
    And think how that delight might serve the world.

         It’s this: for us to fully realize
         What is of greatest value—that is wise.

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