Psychologists angst quite a bit over whether there is an essential us or whether we are creature of circumsances.
Of course we are both and neither.
Without a deep respect for the place where we find ourselves, how can we see the world? Irish Yorkshireman poet David Whyte calls the place we stand “hallowed ground”.
Birmingham poet, Roy Fisher is functional as any Brummy should be.
The universe, we define
As a place capable of having
A place like this for its centre.
There’s no shame/ in letting the world pivot
On your own patch. That’s all a centre is for. (p.13).
Roy Fisher
( I must buy his book but I haven’t discovered the title yet.)
My profession is riddled with questions that were once as compelling as the moon in the water.
Leaders are born
Leaders are made
Intelligence comes in bigger and smaller packages.
It took us some time to realise that what we wanted so badly wasn’t unattainable – it was an illusion.
It’s not so bad, though, to lie back on the grass and look at the moon overhead, is it?
We’ve just got to let go and let the universe whisper its secrets to us.
I watch the people in the world
I watch people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deeper despair
And torturing themselves.
Even if they get what they want
How long will they be able to enjoy it?
For one heavenly pleasure
They suffer ten torments of hell,
Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.
Such people are like monkeys
Frantically grasping for the moon in the water
And then falling into a whirlpool.
How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.
Despite myself, I fret over them all night
And cannot staunch my flow of tears.
“Are you are going to respond warmly to the universe, or not?”
the road from DAMASCUS
“Everyone is warm to something, their team or teddy bear or pint glass.” (p. 97)
“But you could feel warmly towards not just one piece, not only sentimentally and a little sarcastically, but towards all of it, towards all reality.” (p. 97)
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos William
I discovered William Carlos Williams poetry through his poem This is Just to Say, his magnificent poem about eating undeserved plums from the refrigerator. We use This is Just to Say to illustrate savoring and mindfulness, two key ideas in the blossoming positive psychology.
Celebrating the world as it is through American rhythms of speech
I understand The Red Wheel Barrow is even more popular and represents William Carlos Williams’ belief that poetry should portray the essence and meaning of familiar life in simple language using the rhythms of American speech. Someone has helpfully provided a chart to help us read the poem on Wikipedia.
Mindfulness and Happiness
“to draw his themes from what he called “the local.”
“try to see the world as it is”
Isn’t that what we call mindfulness today?
It’s interesting that he had worked out this philosophy before World War II.
you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.
you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.
but I am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one
of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them
but they are
there
and I am
here
I imagine its good to know whether you start from a place of serene calm or constant agitation.
Then the challenges are the same?
To be vital. To live at our frontiers? To have faith in our temperament?
I don’t like anger. I don’t trust it. We just become one track-minded and lose perspective.
Eduardo Galeano expresses the anger many of us feel
But sometimes we do need to sink into an emotion. I re-read Galeano’s words on the hegemony of unfairness and I re-read them aloud. These are hard words to be read aloud to hear their flint-sharp steel-hard tones.
Reading negative poetry aloud at home is safe . . . and cathartic
I felt better. I did.
It doesn’t harm that below those words I had also recorded a positive way forward. But it helped to hear words that confirmed that I am not the only person in the world so heartily tired of having to pretend that the unfairness we see every day is not there.
Maybe one day I will read those words aloud in public
Standing where you are – what do you see?
“Birmingham’s what I think with. It’s not made for that sort of job, but it’s what they gave me.”
What is the moon in the water for you?
“Are you are going to respond warmly to the universe, or not?”
The Red Wheel Barrow
The Aliens
I don’t like anger. I don’t trust it.
