If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 1/15/25 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

What makes a life well-lived? If we look to the advertisers, it is the happily-ever-after of an active, thriving life  made possible by pills the fend off pain or rid of us troubling symptoms, by programs that offer answers to our longing for love and acceptance,  and by products that promise status, wealth, and royal comforts. Marketers of the modern life dance that edge between the inevitable intrusion of pain and suffering and the voracious desire to live fully, happily and without regret. The answer to this dilemma is never really in the outside world. Underneath all the hype of hawkers is a fear and regret of living a partial life as captured in Kahlil Gibran’s instructional poem, Do Not Live A Half-Life. I confess that I have lived a life filled with reluctance. I love the idea of living full on and flat out. But it seems downright exhausting to do so. For me, living fully is more appealing for sprints than marathons; more an act of embrace of the life I live rather than an effort to drain the cup and live every minute to the fullest. What is it for you?

Do Not Live A Half-Life

Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half the way will get you no where
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life.

—Kahlil Gibran
https://medium.com/@lbloder/do-not-live-half-a-life-34d6faba1b10

Note: There are several versions of this poem depending on translation.

Prompt Ideas

  1. What is a half-life? Journal or write a poem about what is missed or left out in a half-life.

  2. Write a poem in defense of a half-life. What are its benefits? Consider writing a poem that includes both 1. what is lost and 2. what is gained in living a half-life.

  3. Gibran admonishes against dying a half-death. How does living a half-life relate to death? Does living a half life (whatever that might mean) imply a half-death? Journal or write a poem about dying a half-death.

  4. What does it mean to live a full  or whole life?

  5. Journal or write an instructional poem using negation (do not  live…; do not be…; or a specific admonishment, like do not say yes when you mean no)

  6. Journal or write a poem about weak or ambiguous refusal (I’ll think about it); or about masked acceptance (I might…); consider personifying the weak refusal or asked acceptance.

  7. Consider writing about any of the halves Gibran describes: half-solutions; half -truths, half dreams, half hopes, etc.

  8. Gibran says half the way will get you nowhere…Journal or write a poem about a time when you (or someone) went half the way somewhere. What happened? What got you (or the narrator) to give up or go back?

  9. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.