You are as strong as your strongest part

The Farewell

"...And facing the people he said:

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. les hasty am I than the wind, but I must go.

We wanderers, ever seeking the way, begin no day where we ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.

Even as the earth sleeps we travel.

We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered...

... if aught I have said is truth, then truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to you thoughts...

...You have been told that, even like a chain, you are only as strong as your weakest link. But this is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.

To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency.

...even like asn ocean, you cannot hasten your tides. And like the seasons you are also. And though in your winter you deny your spring, Yet spring reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.

I speak only to you in words of which you yourself know in thought. And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?

..whenever you pass by a field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand. Verily you often make merry without knowing.

...For this I bless you most:

You give much and know not what you give as all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone. And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.

...it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say, You are not enclosed in your bodies, nor confines to houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the mountains and roves with the wind.

It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into the darkness for safety, But a thing free, a spirit that envelopes the earth and moves in the ether.

It this be vague words, then seek not to clear them. Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end... Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.

And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?

...That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

...Could you but see the tides of the breath you would cease to see all else...

But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.

the veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hand that wove it, And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierces by those fingers that kneaded it.

And you shall see.
And you shall hear.

Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.

For in that day you shall know the hidden purpose in all things, And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.

{Quietly my captain waits, has waited, until I am ready to leave now}

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me

~excerps from The Prophet by Kalil Gibran