This is a very personal poem I wrote a while ago, invoking Plato’s Allegory of the Chariot, in the Phaedrus, as a visual device to express how I felt after making a difficult decision.
The Charioteer
Often times we pray for strength
Strength to do the right thing
Strength to harness our horses
Instead of indulging or ignoring
Instead of falling from the heavens
If our prayers are answered
And vigor floods to our beckoning
One might think we would rejoice
In pride and complacency
The calm after a storm
A scar after a wound
But we err to think
That strength is like a remedy
It assuages pain
Bestows kleos and wisdom
And thus, we will surely emerge happy
Because the pain is intensified too.
And when it does
We are stranded at the pinnacle
And we long to return to earth
Down a slippery slope where strength
Is not the limitting factor-
But what is?
Reason. Like a charioteer we harness
Two steeds of appetite and honour
And I hope we can concur
That we need to find it in ourselves
To not butress the insufferable stress
Of regretting to be strong.
