“Life is a Hunger Game”

Posted: November 20, 2019

By Orayne Williams, MSW

Life is a hunger game.
You are placed in the center of its wilderness, sometimes with little or no survival skills.
Unprepared and fearful your goal is to exit the wilderness without being conformed,
Without changing who you are.
It is indeed the survival of the fittest mind
But what makes us fit?

Scattered and buried in this wilderness
Are life skills gifted to us by Earth’s guardians, The OO
A group of empathic humans with adverse experience on a mission to teach
Life skills they created to help us navigate turmoil and challenges
Like a compass in a broken world
These are skills that secure our safety.

The signal is sounded, let the game begin
Running through the forest like Gump
No time to fit in
Hurdling over broken tree branches
You fell, bruising your knees
Nervous, you thought ‘Should I flee?’
But looking ahead you noticed a package
Covered with dried Autumn leaves.
Unwrapping your package you found
Life skill number 1: resilience.
Reading its steps influenced your decision
To continue navigating your wilderness.

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Orayne Williams is a former Overcoming Obstacles student, life skills advocate, and poet. He earned his Masters in Social Work at Fordham University and is a social worker for the Bronx Defenders in New York City.