Dagkalender van de poëzie for 4 January by the Dutch poet Rouke van der Hoek

What we are not

Books about careers and leadership advise us to be

enterprising, emotionally intelligent, spontaneous,

controlled, assertive, attentive and flexible.

That they advise us because it is what we are not.

Or hardly. Resentful, listless, overrun.

Hikers on the path of habit.

Naturally we try to become what we are not,

but with diminishing success. So what I ought

to become constantly expands. And what I am shrinks.

Only by believing with all my might in the latter,

the dwarf, can it possibly seem

that the giant lays me low:

David against Goliath.

(Past results are no

guarantee for the future.)