Or will we allow ourselves merely to drift
 Into an era of more of the same
 An era drained of significance, without shame, 
 Without wonder or excitement,
 Just the same low-grade entertainment,
 An era boring and predictable 
 ‘Flat, stale, weary and unprofitable’

 In which we drift
 In which we drift along
 Too bored and passive to care
 About what strange realities rear
 Their heads in our days and nights,
 Till we wake too late to the death of our rights
 Too late to do anything
 Too late for thinking
 About what we have allowed 
 To take over our lives
 While we cruised along in casual flight 
 Mildly indifferent to storm or sunlight?

 Or might we choose to make 
 This time a waking up event 
 A moment of world empowerment?
 To pledge, in private, to be more aware
 More playful, more tolerant, and more fair
 More responsible, more wild, more loving
 Awake to our unsuspected powers, more amazing.

 We rise or fall by the choice we make
 It all depends on the road we take 
 And the choice and the road each depend 
 On the light that we have, this light we bend,
 On the light we use
 Or refuse
 On the lies we live by
 And from which we die.

 Extract taken from Wheatley, M (2002) Turning to One Another. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler.