Harjo, Walcott, Schwartz Reflection

Creating a Better Tomorrow: An Individual Makes All the Difference

Self-love and appreciation are often forgotten in the path towards improving the world around us. How can we be expected to aid others to the greatest extent without first recognizing our worth or our full potential? Our individual efforts grow more powerful when joining together with others, but if the foundation of our links prove weak, the strength of our efforts will not be as durable. The poems of Harjo, Walcott, and Shwartz blend together to create a message that advises their readers to embrace their individuality. They touch on this issue so as to highlight the value of an individual's effort to creating a greater future for themselves, thus producing a greater future for all thereafter.

    Harjo's poem entitled A Map to the Next World begins the progressive narrative of self-love, serving as a warning to individuals through its delivery. Harjo's words ultimately caution readers to not forget their soul nor the essence of who they are that was derived from their ancestral, cultural background when paving the way to the future. More precisely, Harjo notes how human forgetfulness is what haunts and plagues our species most, making the future that we create less and less founded in the core values of one's culture (Harjo 12). This sense of abandonment that Harjo discusses is exactly what he is advising against. Instead of prioritizing those internal senses of wayfinding and soul, Harjo writes that we pushed such aside and began to prioritize developments of the capitalistic, science-oriented world we live in now (Harjo 33). Through Harjo's illustration of how we approach the world, readers recognize that we have begun to neglect our internal knowledge for the sake of advancing with the world as our power-driven society demands. To avoid this occurring again in coming generations, a request to get in touch with one's own soul and desires is made. Furthermore, shifting our individual focuses to better align with what we want to bring forth into the future rather than what our social environment demands of us will aid us in creating a path for the future. 

    The next segment of this gradual narrative is present in Walcott's piece entitled Love After Love, which serves as a form of personal affirmation to readers. Walcott's words encourage readers to focus on loving themselves and nourishing their soul first before worrying about supplementing others. While this sounds selfish at face value, the sentiment behind his stanza's is truly more progressive. When one begins to appreciate themselves and what they have done in their life, they gain a sense of fulfillment and a greater capacity to help others as that had helped themself is achieved. Walcott puts it best when he instructs readers to, "Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to yourself, the stranger who has loved you...", nodding to the idea of feeling whole within oneself (Walcott, 8-9). In a way, this also alludes to the Eucharist in which the blood and body of Christ is eaten by His followers as means to remember him by and to thank Him for his sacrifices. The same idea can be applied to the individual partaking in this feast on behalf of themselves, fueling their body with the memory of their life and appreciating all that they have done. In doing so, one will gain a greater sense of self-appreciation and self-love. In turn, believing that you are deserving of love will help you love and care for others to the fullest extent possible, thus creating a strong foundation for moving forward in the future.

    Shwartz concludes this narrative that encourages self-love and its benefits by providing a manifestation that speaks a future of freedom and honesty into existence. This proposed future that is free of fascism and intolerance is verbally expressed through people of all backgrounds. By ranging from race, gender, occupation, and beyond, the individuals participating in Schwartz's spoken-word piece help exemplify the message of individualized effort towards creating a better tomorrow. The speakers are professing aspects of the future that they want to see happen. By saying them out loud, they are making the steps towards achieving their goal seemingly more reachable. This sense of self-assurance and assertiveness of what the future is rather than what it can be helps viewers believe that this change is tangible. The way in which these individuals make these assertions shows the audience that they believe in themselves; they are confident in their ability to achieve this future and project that confidence onto the viewers. In doing so, this sense of self-acceptance that the speakers possess is manifested into the world and upon the people who listen to them, which has the potential to make a society filled with strong individuals ready to mobilize for a greater future. 

    When analyzing these works together, a message regarding the importance of self-love is clear. Harjo, Walcott, and Shwartz, in their own ways, advise their readers to find their soul, nourish it, and spread it as far as they can reach to produce an infectious peace to improve our tomorrow.