On the walls of many American homes hangs a plaque commemorating the statement of the late President John F. Kennedy:
Ask not what your country can do for you, But ask what you can do for your country.
Many years before, the great Lebanese poet, writer and philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote an article that can be translated as either "The New Deal" or "The New Frontier". Gibran writes that: "In the fields of the Middle East, which have been a large burial ground, stand the youth of Spring calling the occupants of the sepulchres to rise and march towards the new frontiers."
Gibran goes on to suggest that there are two types of people; one of the past and one of the future, and challenges his readers to say which they are. "Come and tell me who and what are you". He writes, "Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert".
In his article Gibran encourages people to ponder on whether "you are a slave of yesterday or free for the morrow". "But the children of tomorrow are the ones called by life....They are few in number, but the difference is as between a grain of wheat and a stack of hay. No one knows them but they know each other....They are the seed dropped by the hand of God in the field, breaking through its pod and waving its sapling leaves before the face of the sun".
There are in Australia today two types of people; those of yesterday and those of the future. Which one are you?