Let’s ask ourselves what we all stand for

Are you a Kenyan politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for the country? If you are the first, you are a parasite; if the second, you are an oasis in a desert.

Are you a merchant utilising the need of society for the necessities of life, for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere, hard-working and diligent man facilitating exchange between the weaver and the farmer? Are you charging a reasonable profit as a middleman between the supply and demand?

If you are the first, then you are a criminal whether you live in a palace or prison. If you are the second, you are a charitable man whether you are thanked or denounced by people.

Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of ignorance of people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income?

Or are you a devout and pious man who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of his own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world?

If you are the first, you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast by day and pray by night.

If you are the second, you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air while the fragrance of the flowers is preserved.

Are you a newspaperman who sells his idea and his principle in the slave market, who lives on the misery of people like a buzzard which descends only upon a decaying carcass? Or are you a teacher on the platform of the city gathering experience from life and presenting it to the people as a sermon you have learned?

If you are the first, you are a sore and an ulcer. If you are the second, you are a balsam and a medicine.

Are you a governor who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed?

Or are you the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people? If you are the first, you are a tare (seed of a vetch) in the threshing floor of the nations, and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.

Are you a husband who allows for himself what he disallows for his wife, living in abandonment with the key of her prison in his boots, gorging himself with his favourite food while she sits, by herself, before an empty dish?

Or are you a companion, taking no action except hand in hand, nor doing anything unless she gives her thoughts and opinions, and sharing with her your happiness and success?

If you are the first, you are a remnant of a tribe which, still dressing in skins of animals, vanished long before leaving the caves; and if you are the second, then you are a leader in a nation moving in the dawn toward the light of justice and wisdom.

Are you a searching writer full of self-admiration, keeping his head in the valley of a dusty past, where the ages discarded the remnant of its clothes and useless ideas?

Or are you a clear thinker examining what is good and useful and destroying what is harmful?

If you are the first, you are feeble and stupid, and if you are the second, you are bread for the hungry and water for the thirsty. Are you a poet, who plays the tambourine at the doors of emirs, or the one who walks in the processions with a sponge full of warm water in his mouth, a sponge to be pressed by his tongue as soon as he reaches the cemetery?

Or are you a gift which God has placed in your hands on which to play heavenly melodies which draw our hearts toward the beautiful in life? If you are the first, you are a juggler who evokes in our soul that which is contrary to what you intend. If you are the second, you are love in our hearts and a vision in our minds.’

- This is Khalil Gibran writings as adopted by lawyer Gerald Kithinji