The People I Passed

The People I Passed

Let me tell you about the people that I passed on my way up,
Every face I nodded at and every hand that filled my cup,
The mentors and the obstacles and all the ones who bet against,
The friends who turned to rivals and the rivals who made sense.

There was a man at the entry point who said I’d never scale it,
Turns out he was the first of many forcing me to nail it,
Every person who predicted that my ceiling was too low,
Became a mile marker on the road I had to go.

The people I passed, I remember every one,
Not with bitterness or triumph but with everything we’ve done,
The people I passed were either making me or breaking me in half,
Either way I kept on moving, either way I kept the path.

There was a man at the crossroads who showed me how to read,
The difference between wanting something
and the discipline you need,
I passed him but he travels with me somewhere in my method,
In the patience I apply before the taking is effected.

And there was one whose resistance was the sharpest thing I faced,
Who pushed me with a fury that I never could have placed,
She did not know that every obstacle she stacked up in my way,
Was the composition I’d be using as my scaffold every day.

I am not collecting trophies and I am not collecting debts,
I am cataloguing every lesson in my cabinet of regrets,
Because the people that I passed are not behind me,
they’re inside,
Every one of them a current that I’m riding on this tide.