thoughts about how fragmented all our personalities must be to navigate our roles

led to a memory of latin class at glendale high school in the late 60s

miss nelson discussing the commentaries of the gallic wars by gaius julius cæsar

and that they began with “all of gaul is divided into three arts”

going to google translate and typing english to latin “all humanity is divided into four parts” yielded a sentence-cased version of this poem’s title

chosen because the evils of the world are divided into four parts in the revelation of saint john the divine

as famine, pestilence, war and death, called “the four horsemen of the apocalypse”

and it may be argued that our personalities are faceted by our response to these four phenomena:

when we seek sustenance we hunt and/or gather

when we are sick we shun our kith and kin and seek medical help

when we contend with rivals and other challenges we alter our blood chemistries as if arming ourselves

and when we face doom we cloud up, deny, negotiate, grieve and accept

..

all of these mindsets will be flavored by love or the absence of love

the big challenge is to integrate them all well before your last meal

summoning the four non-horsefolk kindness, awareness, reason and truth

for a wealthy shift of focus and a well-finished race