Where There Is a Will....

Poems about political prisoners, racism, and his own mother’s drug addiction shape the third part of The Rose That Grew from Concrete. Yet the chapter “Just a Breath of Freedom” does not end in bitterness. Its closing piece is one of the most hopeful texts in the entire volume: Where There Is a Will….. The title and dots are printed exactly this way in the book.

Tupac Fills the Old Proverb with Meaning

The poem takes up the proverb “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Tupac fills the adage stanza by stanza with substance. The way leads to searching for and discovering a better day. A positive heart is enough to rise and succeed.

The third stanza is the most political: it describes a place where young people grow up and respect one another for their deeds, not the color of their skin. The idea recalls Martin Luther King’s famous dream of judging people by their character rather than their skin color; however, there is no direct reference in the poem. The final stanza is an instruction to the reader: when times are bleak, they should speak the proverb themselves.

Simple Rhymes Become Guidance for Life

The text is simply structured, with short lines and clear rhymes. It feels almost like a poem for the classroom. That aligns with what Leila Steinberg notes in her introduction to the book: Tupac wanted to use art to help young people in difficult situations. Closely related are If I Fail, in which Tupac promises to learn from mistakes and try again, and And 2morrow with its faith in a new day.

That this optimism stands at the end of the book’s hardest section gives the lines particular weight. Whether Tupac placed it there himself or the editors determined the dramatic structure is not known. The poem is not dated; according to the preface by Afeni Shakur, the poems date from the years 1989 to 1991.

More about the book and all poems in the introduction.