We come into this world without any major options,

chained, since birth, or rather, since our conception,

to the inheritance brought, in fact, imposed, by our ancestors,

those of our family, in addition to those of the larger family,

the entire humanity to which we belong.

Qualities and defects, virtues and vices, they arrive 

combined in the genes of the new being, and, stealthy,  

they wait to manifest themselves in due time.

Our parents, in the joy and happiness of creating a new life,

are not aware of the dangers that lie on standby;

we know they will do everything to separate the wheat

from the chaff, in the future life that is beginning,

a game whose success, unfortunately, we cannot predict.

Our struggle to build a personality, despite such inheritance,

is arduous and relentless, and none of us can escape it,

we have to polish and perfect this new being and pass it on 

to a future generation, much better than we had received.

Let us strive not to fall into banality, but to play the right game.

May the improvement and purity we acquire not be that

of the physical body, which corrupts and decays, but of the spirit,

which, free and sovereign, under the right and reckless command,

has no limit and never ends. 

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©