A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud. He is the new bearer of a great and illustrious ancestry, and upon him depends the brilliant future of this realm. Sing and be merry!" The voices of the throngs, full of joy and thankfulness, flooded the sky with exhilarating song, welcoming the new tyrant who would affix the yoke of oppression to their necks by ruling the weak with bitter authority, and exploiting their bodies and killing their souls. For that destiny, the people were singing and drinking ecstatically to the heady of the new Emir.

Another child entered life and that kingdom at the same time. While the crowds were glorifying the strong and belittling themselves by singing praise to a potential despot, and while the angels of heaven were weeping over the people's weakness and servitude, a sick woman was thinking. She lived in an old, deserted hovel and, lying in her hard bed beside her newly born infant wrapped with ragged swaddles, was starving to death. She was a penurious and miserable young wife neglected by humanity; her husband had fallen into the trap of death set by the prince's oppression, leaving a solitary woman to whom God had sent, that night, a tiny companion to prevent her from working and sustaining life.

As the mass dispersed and silence was restored to the vicinity, the wretched woman placed the infant on her lap and looked into his face and wept as if she were to baptize him with tears. And with a hunger weakened voice she spoke to the child saying, "Why have you left the spiritual world and come to share with me the bitterness of earthly life? Why have you deserted the angels and the spacious firmament and come to this miserable land of humans, filled with agony, oppression, and heartlessness? I have nothing to give you except tears; will you be nourished on tears instead of milk? I have no silk clothes to put on you; will my naked, shivering arms give you warmth? The little animals graze in the pasture and return safely to their shed; and the small birds pick the seeds and sleep placidly between the branches. But you, my beloved, have naught save a loving but destitute mother."

Then she took the infant to her withered breast and clasped her arms around him as if wanting to join the two bodies in one, as before. She lifted her burning eyes slowly toward heaven and cried, "God! Have mercy on my unfortunate countrymen!"

At that moment the clouds floated from the face of the moon, whose beams penetrated the transom of that poor home and fell upon two corpses.

-Khalil Gibran

There once was a man who people always dismissed as being crazy. In a way he was - as he was afraid of his own shadow. Every day he would run from his shadow. In the morning, running East, in the evenings, West - always keeping his shadow behind him. He wasted many years of his life doing so.

Then, one day, he was frantically running East when he found a man hurt on the road. He forgot his fears, gave the man water, and helped him up to health. When the sick man was better again, he said to the man afraid of his shadow, "Thank you for helping me. I have lived a long life and felt it had been long enough, so I left myself to die in the middle of the road. But now that you have helped me, I see every day as more precious than any I had blindly lived before. But why were you, a man so young, on those barren and desolate roads?"

The man afraid of his shadow replied openly with his story, speaking only of the shadow that relentlessly follows him everywhere. The old man replied, "You fool. The sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening. Countless lost souls seek the new day and flee the weight of the present out of fear. You must detach yourself from the yoke of man-made measurements of success, failure, and time. Again, the sun will rise, everyday - no matter who is watching."

The man afraid of his shadow, so confused by his condition and not understanding how the sun caused his shadow and troubles, said, "But this rising of the sun, and setting of the sun, what does it have to do with me?"

"Nothing" said the old man. "Nothing."