Meaningful Words Of Langston Hughes
I own two books by the poet Langston Hughes.
One, which I can’t find at the moment, is a very big collection of all his poetry. The other is Selected Poems of Langston Hughes.
The big inclusive collection is frankly just a mess. You’d have to be a Hughes scholar or the biggest fan of Hughes in the world to mentally process all the poems. Also, many of the poems don’t read very well or now seem dated.
The big book has great value. I’m just not certain its value would be obvious to all readers.
The smaller book still has many poems to read. But they are better organized and carefully selected. You can open any page and find something of value.
I think the same principle we see with the Hughes books also holds true for other things we read, blog posts we read and write and conversations we have. There are a lot of words out there—But only a few of them really have lasting meaning.
In an introduction to a translation of The Dhammapada, which are Buddhist scriptures, Kenneth Easwaran writes—“Every reader knows that the book which becomes part of one’s life means more than a thousand others.”
Hughes in his lifetime easily passed the test of using and writing words that have lasting meaning. Hopefully, you and I are also able to pass that test in whatever way our lives offer the opportunity for meaning.
Every life offers the opportunity for meaning.
The above photo was taken by Nickolas Muray who released his rights to the picture.
