Here’s the Problem with Reading Rumi

Even if he is the best selling poet in the US

Mitch Ditkoff
2 min readNov 8, 2022
Photo by Armin Lotfi on Unsplash

Here’s the problem with reading Rumi:
there’s a good chance you will never come back,
which might, of course, be fine for you, oh seeker of light,
but what about the person you are most committed to here on planet earth?

Won’t they feel abandoned, you having disappeared without a trace,
your body now a shadow,
your heart having exploded into a thousand pieces,
each one a seed about to populate another world?

What about that person, the one you share your hopes and dreams with,
the one who holds you late at night?

If this is what concerns you, my friend,
simply tell your partner this:
“Oh my dearest darling, if only I knew who I was,
I would sing to you all day and night, which is why, you see, I read Rumi, the pied piper of my soul, my twin.
You and I, dear heart, are far more than a couple,
we are couplets in a greater poem,
each one a moving line with its own rhythm and internal rhyme, expressions of the ancient quest for love
now made greater by each other,
why I come home to you at night,
why you come home to me,
why I must forgive myself daily…

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Mitch Ditkoff

Co-Founder of Idea Champions and Face the Music. Author of Storytelling for the Revolution, Storytelling at Work, Unspoken Word and Free the Genie. Human being