Of Our Spiritual Strivings


O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry, As I lie
and listen, and cannot understand. The voice of my
heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water, crying for
rest, is it I, is it I? All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest.
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in
the west; And the heart shall be weary and wonder
and cry like the sea, All life long crying without
avail, As the water all night long is crying to me.
-- ARTHUR SYMONS.


I strive to live freely with my thoughts and with my fruitful dreams. I strive to always listen and honor my spirit as a woman foremost and as a sister, a daughter to my immediate family. I strive to be one with the man I love with my heart and soul. I strive to provide and feed the children that God will undoubtly bless our union in the days to come. Yes, I strive. I strive with many measures to fit my completion of a black woman. I strive because the mighty creator has blessed me into being.

I live for today and plan with great hope for tomorrow. Eyes are on me to succeed and I strive on to reach my destination. I strive further. Further down the path of the journey of living. What do I see when I look into a mirror? I see history and pride. I see in my eyes of the old women I once were in another lifetime and then I see a young black girl in search of her self and in search of her being...present for the search of its purpose. Yes, I strive to have the complete understanding of my soul. The choices of being a woman of color is marked in wet sand across the shores leading to hazy bronze horizon in the sky. Yes, I strive.

Bringing these emotions and placing them on paper is a thing of beauty to me, I marvled at the extraodinary craftmanship of W.E.B. Du Bois influential essay, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Just in the beginning statement he sets the tone of what motivated him to write such a passionate essay.

“Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked questions: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy, by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter around it.. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville, or do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?”
The copyright of the article Of Our Spiritual Strivings in Writing from Harlem is owned by Nichel Anderson. Permission to republish Of Our Spiritual Strivings in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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