NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A Brooklyn girl’s poem is taking over the Internet.
Chanie Gorkin, a 17-year-old about to enter the 12th grade at the Lubavitch high school Beth Rivkah, originally wrote the poem entitled “Worst Day Ever?” for an assignment at school.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as the worst day ever,” Gorkin told 1010 WINS in an exclusive interview Monday. “I wanted to show how your day is really based on how you look at things.”The poem is inspired by Talmudic teachings.
“It comes from Hasidic philosophy, which I learn daily and try to take to heart, so I try my best to live what I wrote,” Gorkin said.
The complex poem contains a surprise. From top to bottom it reads negatively, but when read in reverse the message drastically changes.
“It took me a few hours [to write],” Gorkin said. “I was scribbling, erasing, writing, trying to figure out how to make it work both ways.”
The poem reads:
Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day
Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.
It was posted online last year as part of a contest on PoetryNation.com, but went viral after it was recently spotted hanging on a wall in North London by a man who then tweeted it out. It garnered thousands of shares and made its way onto Facebook.
The poem has been viewed more than 1.3 million times on imgur.com.Gorkin said she is overwhelmed by the response.
“I knew that it was shared on Facebook before and people liked it, but I didn’t know it was going around like this,” Gorkin said. “I was kind of overwhelmed, but I’m happy that so many people were inspired.”
She hopes her message will continue to spread.
“I’m very happy that so many people got this message and if it made people think a little more and inspire people to change their perspective then I’m very happy,” Gorkin said. “I just hope that if people were really inspired by this then they should try to do something to inspire other people and spread this attitude everywhere.”