I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the regret of having insight or foresight but lacking the strength to act on it for the benefit of others.
Black Elk reflects on a profound vision he had that could have potentially benefited his people, highlighting the tension between having great ideas or insights and the personal or collective inability to actualize them. This quote speaks to the burden of knowing one's potential impact but feeling powerless to bring it to fruition.
In practice
During a motivational speech about leadership and vision.
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer's slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue.
You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed β so you were a good man just the same.
Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes.
The mirror of the heart must be clear, so you can discern the ugly from the beautiful.
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