52 Ordinary Words: Disappointment

© Sophia Roberts

How disappointed we feel will depend on the magnitude of our disappointment.  If my soufflé fails to rise or I discover the dress I planned to wear to an important occasion no longer fits I will be mildly disappointed, but if my daughter fails to win a place at the university of her choosing I may be very disappointed.  I may feel that the decision to turn her down is unfair.  All the more so if I believe that it will have a significant impact on her career, once she graduates. 

I will be disappointed on her behalf, as well.  And, like most parents, I will feel disappointed, for her, if her boyfriend dumps her for someone else. The disappointment I feel will be the measure of how deeply I empathise with her disappointment.

How we respond to any given disappointment – how unhappy we feel - is measure of much we’ve invested in our hopes and expectations for an outcome.  We will doubtless feel sadness, dissatisfaction or displeasure that something we’d anticipated would go according to plan has not come to pass.  And if, upon reflection, we can see beyond our immediate feelings, disappointment can be a means for growth.  We may find that as we comfort ourselves with platitudes like, ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ or ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea,’ that there’s compensation to be had in every disappointment

David Whyte, writing in Consolations agrees that disappointment can be a teacher: an opportunity to not only reappraise who we have become and our relationship to the world (our place in it) but also to consider “the larger foundational reality that lies beyond any false self we had only projected upon the outer world.”  Disappointment may be “the first stage of our emancipation into the next greater pattern of existence.”

So the measure of what we can learn from disappointment is the measure of our willingness to embrace it as a teacher; our willingness to allow it to bring us back down to ground.  Whyte understands this to mean that disappointment can restore us “to a firmer sense of our self, a surer sense of our world, and what is good and possible for us in the world, or whether we experience it only as a wound that makes us retreat from farther participation.”

In the light of what we discover about ourselves and the world  we may see that our aspirations weren’t realistic in the first place and consider that if we set our expectations lower, we’ll have less disappointment, and any disappointment we do experience won’t feel as crushing:  if we don’t have hope, our hope can’t be crushed.  Without hope and expectation, we couldn’t have disappointment.  But is living without hope a life really worth living? Would we really be happier if we expected everything in our life to crumble to ashes?  Realistically we wouldn’t attempt anything.  Sadly, some people do give up and are reduced to shadows of their former selves.

I begin to feel that Whyte’s response on disappointment is a tad melodramatic.  At one time to disappoint mean ‘to undo the appointment, remove from office,’ but now?  I can appreciate that the confiscation of title and lands in the early fifteenth century would have had serious repercussions, but in this day and age don’t we understand disappointment to be something a lot less serious? 

Surely, what we understand as disappointment doesn’t impinge on us to this extent?  I’m not sure I would describe my response to a heart broken in love or the hurt a disloyal friend has caused me as merely disappointing; I would consider the word disappointment too mild.  

OK.  I’m probably splitting hairs.   A mid-life crisis can be described as having a sense of profound disappointment – not as a response to any one event, but to a series of events.  My understanding is that disappointment of this magnitude (which I feel is where Whyte is coming from) is best described as a nebulous intense feeling – that will have as much to do with how we consider things ought to be as with how things actually are.  

And thus - despite my misgivings - I find myself agreeing with Whyte.  Irrespective of the magnitude disappointment is always a reality check and a call to transformation.

52 Ordinary Words: Destiny

© Sophia Roberts

How comforting to think that “There's a divinity that shapes our ends.  Rough-hew them how we will—.” (Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 2).  No need to be accountable to ourselves – or indeed to anyone else.  Divine providence has a grand plan laid out for us; all we have to do is to give in gracefully.  Fine, if we are destined for great things; but far less tantalising if a power greater than ourselves has decided that we are born to commit heinous crimes, or to live out a life that will come to nothing much at all, despite our best efforts.

David Whyte, writing in Consolations, says that the word, destiny, is hardly used like this, but I’m not so sure.  Just look at the wealth of books that would have us believe we born to achieve great things.  This sort of literature allures us with the promise that we’re meant for something much better than the cards we’ve been dealt.  Destiny understood in this sense is "a word of storybook or mythic dimension.”

But, I do the literature an injustice, because its overriding message is that, having identified a special something that only we can achieve, it’s down to us to follow the road less travelled, with discipline.  As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”

For my money, Heraclitus had it about right, when he said that, “character is destiny.”  He was not a fatalist – far from it – he had a profound belief in our responsibility to shape our own ends.  “Good character is not formed in a week or a month ... Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.”  He believed in free will. 

But this is where it gets complicated: in order for free will to exist, our thoughts and actions must be the result of our will and our will alone. Yet, all things in the universe appear to be subject to cause and effect.  So why would our thoughts and actions be any different?  It would seem that in order to have free will, we would be defying the laws of reality, which is all events are caused by previous events.  And if we are capable of defying the laws of reality, then that would suggest that we are god-like.

Whyte’s attempts to resolve this dichotomy are refreshing.  “When we choose between these two poles of mythic treatment or fated failure, we may miss … that our future is influenced by the very way we hold the conversation of life itself.”  This – broadly speaking - humanist stance hinges on how we perceive the world.  “We are shaped by our shaping of the world and are shaped again, in turn.  The way we face the world alters the face we see in the world.” 

This applies just as much to a bad deal as it does to possibilities.  We always have a choice. “The sense of satisfaction involved and the possibility of fulfilling its promise may depend on our brave participation, a willingness to hazard ourselves in a difficult world, a certain form of wild generosity with our gifts.”  

We can be equal to whatever we encounter.  This is not the same as saying it is easy, but is saying that we can give the fates (for want of a much better expression!) a good run for their money.  It’s down to us: to engage with the “everyday conversational essence of destiny;” to know ourselves, and to be brave.

I leave you with one of Whyte’s poems:

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains

the geese turn into

the light again

Painting their

black silhouettes

on an open sky.

Sometimes everything

has to be

inscribed across

the heavens

so you can find

the one line

already written

inside you.

Sometimes it takes

a great sky

to find that

first, bright

and indescribable

wedge of freedom

in your own heart.

Sometimes with

the bones of the black

sticks left when the fire

has gone out

someone has written

something new

in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.

Even as the light fades quickly now,

you are arriving. 

~ David Whyte

52 Ordinary Words: Despair

© Sophia Roberts

I am no stranger to despair; I know what it is to lose all hope. 

But my despair is a mere drop in the ocean compared to those who despair because they have nothing; nothing at all.  I’m an affluent white, middle-class woman who lives in a large house, who always has enough to eat, who enjoys fresh running water at the turn of a tap, electric light at the flick of a switch or heating when the weather demands it; I have lost no children, I have never lived in a war zone; I am not running in terror for my life….  The list goes on and on and on.

And yet.  And yet, despite enjoying all these advantages, when despair has me in its grip I am blind.  Everything before is hopeless; I cannot see the point in carrying on.  To all intents and purposes I’m lost – to myself and to the world.  Attempts to pull myself together are worse than useless.  Not least because I am not owning where I am.  As Whyte acknowledges in his book, Consolations, the first step when promoting a recovery is to let despair “have its own life, neither holding it nor moving it on before its time.”

However, earlier in his essay, he also says that despair is a last resort.  I confess I have never thought about it like this, before.  Nor have I ever considered it a haven; a haven is a place of safety and a refuge from the storms of life.  I think I can honestly say I would never choose the harbour of despair over life on the open seas, no matter how tempestuous the storm.

But, perhaps I am kidding myself; perhaps I am talking about depression, which Whyte differentiates from despair, “Despair turns to depression … when we try to make it stay beyond its appointed season and start to shape our identity around its frozen disappointments.” 

I begin to think I don’t know what despair is - unless we are differentiating between a temporary and a permanent feeling.  But who’s to say what’s temporary?  If I feel despair for more than three days – and fail to emerge healed and recovered – am I depressed? 

Of course not.  Grief is a “necessary and seasonal state of repair, a temporary healing absence … the time in which we both endure and heal,” when it takes take time to find a new form of hope. “

Even so, I can’t help but think that Whyte is guilty of romanticising the concept, despair, even though I can resonate with his thinking that despair, “has its own sense of achievement, and despair … needs despair to keep it alive.” 

But how can he possibly think that “despair can only stay beyond its appointed time through the forced artificiality of created distance;” that we would ever choose to keep it alive by “freezing our sense of time and the rhythms of time.”  I take it as read that “when the season is allowed to turn, despair cannot survive,” but how much of this is down to our own deliberate choice?

Yet, I do know that in order to “keep despair alive” that it “needs a certain tending, reinforcing and isolation;” and as long as we are talking about despair - as Whyte understands it - I think he’s right.  And that by “paying a profound and courageous attention to the body and the breath, independent of our imprisoning thoughts and stories, even … to despair itself, and the way we hold it,” we can feel a degree of relief.  I remember when I fell upon this strategy, almost by accident, as I lay on my bed feeling crippled by my reaction to bad news.  Indeed I took my “first step out of despair by taking on its full weight and coming fully to ground in [my] wish not to be here.”  I let my body and the world breathe again.  Indeed despair couldn’t do anything, but “change into something else.”

Whyte postulates that despair is but “a waveform passing through the body,” because a season left to itself will always move, however slowly, under its own patience, power and volition.”  I can’t disagree with this, but I am left wondering about those people who have been traumatised by the effects of unrelenting despair that they can never recover from.  Without wishing to refer to specific individuals I can think of several people who, like me, read Whyte’s essay on Despair, and despaired.

52 Ordinary Words: Denial

© Sophia Roberts

When I was first diagnosed with MS, over twenty years ago, I was told repeatedly that I was in denial.  This would have been because I chose to ignore it and to carry on – as far as possible – as if it was “business as usual.”  I think a part of me was in - what is commonly understood as – denial.  But, even now - when there’s no doubt that I suffer with MS, because my lifestyle has been radically altered - I prefer to live my life pretending that I haven’t got it. 

I’ve always maintained that I happen to have MS, but that I’m not defined by it.  I took the view, right from the start, that I was going to focus on what I could do with it and not on what I couldn’t do.  Indeed, as David Whyte says, in his book, Consolations, denial can be a mercy, because it can cradle and hold “an identity until it is ready to move on.” 

So there are times when choosing to deny something is a very positive thing to do.  Indeed, because I chose to deny that it was the last day of my holiday on Friday (and to block all negative thoughts) I squeezed the last possible drop from the tube.  In fact it wasn’t until I set my alarm to be up very early on Saturday morning, in order that I pack at the last possible moment, that I admitted to myself that it was over, for certain. 

But I am left wondering about Whyte’s notion that denial “fully experienced, also enables us to understand the full measure of our reluctance thus becoming a way of both paying attention to and appreciating what is asking to be seen.”  I take it that he is referring to the states of mind I have outlined above, because there are many people who are in denial but are not aware that they are blocking out reality. 

I am thinking, in particular, of Mary, who gave every impression that she had no idea she was dying – and if she suspected she was I would counter that she was repudiating the obvious.  Would she have considered denial a “beautiful transitional state”?  I imagine it could be seen in that light – in retrospect – and certainly there are things it is better that we do refuse to engage in, but isn’t engagement Whyte’s point, here?  For, usually, when we deny something we are, in a sense, rejecting it.  And if we are denied something we are unable to proceed – it is rejecting us.

Had Mary meditated upon her impending death would she have been better able to make the transition?  I believe that denial, for her, was a prison, such that when the moment came for her to die – as it had to – she was terrified.  If only denial had prepared her to take the next step with courage. 

Denial came to a natural end when Mary breathed her last.   But, as her death was slow and painless surely it would have been easier (for her, as well as for us) had she paid attention to what beckoned and readied herself for the inevitable casting off of a final skin.  She gave the impression that preferred to refuse to face what she considered she was not yet ripe for, because she wanted to live in the present – to squeeze out every last drop.  Her privilege, of course (!)

The process of denial can be, as Whyte says, “the crossroads between perception and readiness;” in which case it is indeed a “necessary dynamic so that the overpowering elements of a waiting terrifying universe can be held for now, over the horizon”.  Until then we are called to be here now, “breathing the air of the present.”  

52 Ordinary Words: Crisis

© Sophia Roberts

I always associate the word crisis with the turning point of a disease. Indeed the medical Latin term arises from the Greek word krisis, meaning decision. Thus it refers either to an event or to the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death.

In any event, a crisis is a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; a turning point.

When David Whyte, in his book, Consolations, says that crisis is unavoidable, that every human life will eventually be drawn “toward the raw, dynamic essentials of its existence, as if everything up to that point had been a preparation… for a confrontation in an elemental form with our essential flaw,” I agree with him.  Until then we can only imagine how something will feel; how it will affect us. In this respect I well remember the experience of giving birth; no amount of imagining could have prepared me for it.

But I do wonder what he means by “our essential flaw.” I take that he is referring to that aspect of our human nature that tends to live beyond and above the stuff of life - “the rawness of life” - and to indulge in a “felt need to control the narrative of the story … with no regard to outside revelation.”

I can’t say that my response to any crisis in my life has felt like an encounter with a “robust luminous vulnerability,” although I would concede that when sat with a dying person I have felt “shot through with the necessary, imminent and inevitable prospect of loss.” And whilst I know how a crisis of faith can feel like a dark night of the soul, I have serious doubts that such a noche oscura del alma pertains to what many of us feel at a moment of crisis.

A crisis, to my mind, is that moment when our ability to choose is thrown into sharp relief; as such it represents an opportunity: to go backwards in fear, or forward in faith.

Our best response when confronted by a crisis is to ride it out on a wave of our own making; for at such moments, if we are prepared to give up our known selves, we have an opportunity to be “renamed, revealed and re-ordered”. (On a more sober note Whyte also tells us every time we endure a crisis we have attended another dress rehearsal for the process of our own dying.  I can't argue with that!)

My overriding impression is that Whyte is suggesting that we respond to the call of a crisis by living in the moment, without fear, but in a spirit of profound trust. For, as Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

52 Ordinary Words: Courage

© Sophia Roberts

One of the people I used to (and still do) associate with courage is Siegfried Sassoon, if only because I likened myself to him when told that I had courage. Shame on me, but in mitigation it was long time ago and I was very young. My point was that I did what I had to do – as did he – because a job had to be done; it was either sink or swim - and because I considered that we both experienced a reckless fearlessness when confronted with danger.

I was confusing courage with bravery. Bravery is the ability to confront pain, danger or attempts of intimidation without any feeling of fear. It doesn’t involve much thinking and for those who have it, often manifests itself as integral to their human nature.

Courage, on the other hand, is the ability to undertake an overwhelming difficulty or to bear with pain despite the eminent and unavoidable presence of fear. More than a quality, it is a state of mind driven by a cause that makes the struggle worthwhile. The essence of courage is not the feeling of being certainly capable of overcoming what’s one is faced with, but rather it is the wilful choice to fight regardless of the consequences.

And whilst Lady Macbeth was encouraging her husband to commit murder, what she said, when persuading him to kill Duncan, “But screw your courage to the sticking place/and we'll not fail,” illustrates this point perfectly. Whilst the experts differ (the OED suggests that Lady Macbeth's original words refer to the twisting of a tuning peg until it becomes set in its hole, and the editor of The Riverside Shakespeare suggests that a "sticking place" is "the mark to which a soldier screwed up the cord of a crossbow”), Lady Macbeth's meaning is obvious: "Tighten up your courage until it is fixed in the place necessary for the murder of the king." She does not say, “Don’t be afraid.”

David Whyte in his book, Consolations, alerts us to the etymology of the word and I note that the words 'heart', 'innermost feelings' and 'inner', cross many linguistic and cultural boundaries.

He goes on to say that courage is “the measure of our heartfelt participation” with where we find ourselves, “to make conscious those things we already feel deeply”; and to live with the consequences. I must say his take brought me up short: does courageous mean being true to who we are, even when we don’t find ourselves in life and death situations? Equally, I initially had some difficulties with his thoughts on parenthood and courage. However, upon reflection, I recall that when I had my first child (aged 24) that in the midst of my overwhelming feelings of sheer helplessness, I could hear my inner voice saying, “All I can do it is to be the best mother I can; just take one day at a time.” Accordingly, I appreciate what he means when he observes that “courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive.”

I struggled with Whyte’s take on the absurdist (existential) philosophy of Albert Camus. The latter maintained that life has inherent worth, even if it has no inherent meaning. It most certainly does take courage to live when you can see no point to it, or if you are crushingly miserable. In this scenario, as Whyte says, we can only demonstrate faith in possibilities.

Further, an existentialist would maintain, a depressed person always has choices. A depressed person can succumb or they can revolt. They can choose to face the reality of the depression, and continue to live anyway, in spite of it. Camus does not deny it is a struggle – his exemplar of the absurd person is the mythical Greek king Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a mountain only to watch it roll down again. But he does hold that life’s worth and happiness exists in the authentic awareness of that revolt. What Camus says – to the absurd person, the depressive person, the suicidal person – is that life does not need meaning to have worth. “That revolt gives life its value.” he writes, and concludes that “the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

To live courageously is to change the things we can.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

And in facing the absurd, Camus finds not nihilism but authentic happiness, happiness without hope, happiness simply in the present moment. “If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as… in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

52 Ordinary Words: Confession

© Sophia Roberts

When I first went to Confession at the age of eleven I had to invent a sin. I couldn't come up with anything. It wasn't that I lacked the imagination: I said I'd stolen my sister's pencil case!

I didn't appreciate a lot of things about the sacrament of Confession for a long time. But when I did, I came to know that it is about much more than admitting to someone else what you've done - or, for that matter, failed to do - and for which you are truly sorry.

I'm entirely with David Whyte when he says, in his book, Consolations, that a confession's a profession of allegiance: a first step on the road leading home. I like his description of confession as the shearing away of a former identity (a working delusion) to reveal an honest self dedicated "to something beyond the mere threat of ... punishment."

But no confession is without consequences. Saying, 'sorry' is not a cure-all; we still have to live with what we've done, and so do other people. And I would also hold that, sometimes, we can consider confessing a luxury; particularly when the only positive consequence is to salve our own conscience - to dump a burden, so we feel better. In some cases confessing a truth will only cause a great deal of unnecessary pain.

The alternative - to live with the burden of our silence - may be the kinder alternative. A man confessing a very old sin of adultery, for which he's truly sorry, could well be left to carry on his "journey newly alone, unaccompanied by the familiar company [he] has kept until now," were he to confess his sin, but so could his wife, who has, hitherto been happy in a stable, if duplicitous, marriage. A matter of the greater evil?

If we risk confession and the loss of "our old fearful identity" - which preservation will doubtless have taken an inordinate amount of effort and willpower - we come to appreciate that our old sense of fixed personhood was only ever temporary and provisional. We become liberated to commit to a new life, "shaped around a different life that calls for a deeper discipline." We come out of hiding, no longer living on the defensive, but true to ourselves and others, "integrating the offending with the offended, inside and out."

Over the years I have come to appreciate that confession is a continuous process of dedication and not a static product: it's a way of life. It's living according to a manifesto. It's living courageously and honourably, whereby we declare our commitment to others - and to ourselves - by bearing witness, in words and deeds, to the highest good.

52 Ordinary Words: Besieged

© Sophia Roberts

This doesn’t strike me as an ordinary word.  If someone is besieged it sounds as if they are enduring a state of emergency and need rescuing - as a matter of urgency.  I’m not sure that I agree with what David Whyte says in his book, Consolations, that this is how most people feel most of the time.  If he’s right then most people must be in state of nervous exhaustion and close to breaking point. 

I do agree that when I feel like this that it’s my own deliberate fault; that I am responsible - if not for the extenuating circumstances, than for my response.  This sound like a tough call, but I do believe we bear a deal of responsibility for how we react to any given situation.  It may not be easy, but we always have choices.

I am heartened to note that Whyte recognises that being besieged doesn’t necessarily refer to living in a war zone; that the fall out from creative ‘success’ can be just as onerous. It can set up a perceived demand; to not only repeat the performance, but to do better, next time.

But perception is the operative word in this context.  If we perceive we are besieged then, doubtless, we are.

Even relatively laid back, or retired people, have responsibilities and commitments.  And even runaways have their problems: if we choose to go into the desert (literally or metaphorically) we are - at the very least - obliged to provide ourselves with food, warmth and shelter.  There is no escape: if we have something that the world wants - be it a fortune or wisdom – we are unlikely to be left to our own devices for very long.  We may consider that we are of no interest at all (that we have nothing to give), but there will always be the curious or the concerned.  Further, we live in a state of flux; the world does not stop just because we want it to!

As Whyte says, we all of us define ourselves in relation to the society in which we live; even if we consider that we have made a choice to live outside it. We all define ourselves in terms of other people. 

So, I take it as read that if you are reading this that you, too, are a member of a society (!) And I also take it as read that your life is a kind of juggling act; that your challenge is living in the midst of commitments – be they to yourself, or to others – without feeling beset. 

In this essay I confess Whyte confounds me somewhat, but if I read him correctly he suggests that we start the day with a Not to Do List and thereby to set aside a moment of undoing and silence to create a foundation of freedom, from which we can re-imagine or re-see ourselves from outside the margins of a time-bound world.  We let go, therefore before we grasp the challenges of the day. Christians would say, “Let go, and let God,” 

One of the great Christian apologists of the last century, C.S. Lewis, made the point that “The gates of Hell are locked from the inside.”  This line is part of the description of C. S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce: a work of theological fantasy in which he reflects on the Christian conception of heaven and hell.  The entire text is: 

"What if anyone in Hell could take a bus trip to Heaven and stay there forever if they wanted to?  In The Great Divorce C. S. Lewis again employs his formidable talent for fable and allegory. The writer finds himself in Hell boarding a bus bound for Heaven. The amazing opportunity is that anyone who wants to stay in Heaven, can. This is the starting point for an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment. Lewis’s revolutionary idea is the discovery that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. In Lewis’s own words, “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

Many of you are not theists, but you will get the gist.  If we are to lift the siege we must adjust our relationship with ourselves and our besiegers; and to be concerned less with what lies beyond the walls - where we fondly imagine our freedom lies.  If we want to experience true freedom we must adjust our relationship with the people and the concerns that we feel beset us.  We can do this if we are rooted in a sense of who we really are.  If we able to reflect – and not to react - we can learn to love ourselves and others, and in so doing become enabled to love the part we must play in our immediate  world.  Only then will, what we perceive as, walls or barriers fall away.

52 Ordinary Words: Beginning

© Sophia Roberts

I rarely experience difficulties starting anything.   The same has not always been said, of my ability to finish projects.  Hence my environment used to be littered with WIPs (works in progress).   Periodically I would decide to either ditch them. altogether, or to make a super human effort to complete a few.  

When I considered that honour had been satisfied (most of the WIPs were finished) I would allow myself to start something new.  Needless to say this didn’t last long.   If there was a loophole I could use to justify having several other new projects on the go, I endorsed it; and before long the quantity of WIPs had escalated; I was back where I started.

I now liken my behaviour to that of a yo-yo dieter; I was indulging in a form of cyclic comfort eating, whenever I felt tired or blue. No sooner had I satisfied a desire for the hit of instant gratification then I felt the need to start something else.  

I can’t say that I’m 'cured', but several things have made a radical difference.  This is one of them.  About fifteen years ago I admired S’s Book Diary that she’d been keeping for over forty years.  It was an impressive chronological record of her reading history.  I decided to start one of my own and throughout 1997 I wrote down details of every book that I read. 

I resolved that I would only record titles that I read from cover-to-cover.  I was usually inclined to do this, but in order to be quite sure I now took a great deal more care when choosing to start a book, in the first place.  This new habit bore fruit.  By the end of 1997 I had a record of what I'd committed to finish and tangible evidence that I could regulate myself - if I really wanted to. 

My Book Diary was an end product, but I had learnt something important about myself and what works for me; I had also learnt something about the importance of honouring the process that a beginning heralds.   If there’s no commitment to an ending, then why finish anything... ? I now knew the quality of an ending is reflected in the quality of a beginning; the attention paid to preparation.  David Whyte makes this point in his book, ‘Consolations’ when he says, “the ability to make a good beginning is an art form.” 

I think this is particularly true when beginning a creative project.  In her book, 'The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life', Twyla Thorp says, "In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative." She talks about rituals that bring us into the zone, whilst Whyte talks about clearing.

Whyte touches on the risks that attach to beginnings, which I find particularly pertinent.  I think that for most of my life I didn’t appreciate the risk that attaches to starting something.  Maybe, if I had I’d have been less inclined to dive in head-first.

I am about to start a course called Dreaming on Paper: The Creative Sketchbook, which beginning will take me well out of my comfort-zone. Indeed I feel some reluctance to start, because I have serious doubts that I will be able to do it justice – I am not an artist. There is definitely a part of me that is afraid to participate, because "I have nothing new to offer."

I’m going to have to practice Beginner’s Mind: to have an attitude of openness, eagerness, and a lack of preconceptions!

52 Ordinary Words: Beauty

Smoke subjectively observing the sun objectively rising (© Sophia Roberts)

It is with some relief that I see David Whyte’s word for this week is Beauty.  We all know beauty when we see it and Whyte’s response is not complex, for which I am grateful.  He is a traditionalist:  for him, beauty can be counted among the ultimate values, with goodness, truth, and justice.

When I read philosophy at university I soon discovered that the nature of beauty is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy.  In essence, the debate is over whether beauty is subjective or whether it is an objective feature of beautiful things.

Though Plato and Aristotle disagreed on what beauty is, they both regarded it as objective, in the sense that it is not localised in the response of the beholder.  Indeed, until the eighteenth century, most philosophical accounts of beauty treated it as an objective quality: they located it in the beautiful object itself or in the qualities of that object.

Tributes to the objective pleasures of beauty were often described in quite ecstatic, subjective terms, as in Plotinus: “This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce: wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight” (Plotinus 23, [Ennead 1, 3]). 

But, by the eighteenth century Locke – and others – maintained that our appreciation of something beautiful is merely our subjective response to it.  Nothing is inherently beautiful of itself.  

However, if beauty is entirely subjective, then it seems that the word has no meaning; or that we are not communicating anything - other than our own opinion - when we call something beautiful.

Both Humes and Kant considered that the purely objective view reduced beauty to a matter of taste or social and cultural constructs.  They then went on went on to acknowledge that reasons can count, but that some tastes are better than others (!) Thus, in their different ways, they agreed that every judgment of beauty is based on a personal experience, and that such judgments vary from person to person.

And so on, and so forth…  Until the 21^st century, when Crispin Sartwell in his book, Six Names of Beauty (2004), "attributes beauty neither exclusively to the subject nor to the object, but to the relation between them and, even more widely, also to the situation or environment in which they are both embedded. He points out that when we attribute beauty to the night sky, for instance, we do not take ourselves simply to be reporting a state of pleasure in ourselves; we are turned outward toward it; we are celebrating the real world. On the other hand, if there were no perceivers capable of experiencing such things, there would be no beauty. Beauty, rather, emerges in situations in which subject and object are juxtaposed and connected."

On a first reading Whyte’s conception is classical: beauty consists of an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions.  And yet, he is also an idealist: his is a mystical vision of the beauty.  In this tradition, the human soul, as it were, recognises in beauty its true origin and destiny. Whyte specifically uses the word bridge as a metaphor to describe the moment when our eyes, ears and imagination carry us from the realm of the world to the heart: to describe what happens to us when when we look at something of beauty and it resonates with the beauty that already resides within us. 

Even so, I find Whyte’s use of language quite tricky and there are a number of holes in his argument.  “Beauty is the harvest of presence” sounds very lovely, but I have to dig deep to really understand what it is that that he’s saying.  Is “beauty an achieved state of both deep attention and self-forgetting?”  We don’t usually describe the state of transcendence that can be acquired through long periods of prayer and meditation as a state of beauty.  And I can’t quite get my head around “beauty invites us, through entrancement, to that fearful frontier between what we think make us; and what we think makes the world.”  Equally beauty “is an inner and an outer complexion living in one face.”  And I fail to see how beauty “especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless,” with the scattering of apples blossom, for instance. 

But perhaps I can appreciate that “the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur” is beautiful.  Yes, I can see that beauty is to be found in being truly present to this; even if I am not prepared to go along with calling it the harvest of presence, which suggests – to my mind – a finality, a finished product.

Fans of David Whyte will doubtless disagree with me!  For the record, I do delight in the beautiful profusion of the things of this world that merge into a single spiritual unity.  I’m an idealist, too.

52 Ordinary Words: Anger

© Sophia Roberts

It takes a lot for me to lose my temper, but in no time at all - having exploded - I'm regretting it and apologising.  This may have something to do with my dislike of displays of temper in others.  But apart from a genuine fear of angry people, which may have arisen from observing my father's temper tantrums (he would jump and down in shows of sheer frustration!), there is also something about anger being an undignified loose cannon; it’s an ugly and negative emotion.

When I saw that the third word David Whyte had chosen to write about in his book, Consolations, I anticipated that he might say something about righteous anger and that he would doubtless reiterate what a Gestalt therapist had once said about it being a valid emotion.  And maybe he would say something about repression.  I did not expect him to come out - at first reading - in favour of it being something positive; because anger’s typically considered a bad thing that should be justified - and kept on a short leash.

I was surprised to read that he feels anger “is the deepest form of compassion,” and that it is “the purest form of care.”  I can appreciate that it illuminates what we care for, what we want to protect and what we are willing to “hazard ourselves for” and that it touches “the limits our understanding” - that it is a violent response to our helplessness.  But does it really represent the “unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing in the face or our love”? 

I have never associated anger with fear before; but Whyte is right: anger is another face of fear.  It is a response to feelings of powerlessness.  We do turn to anger (violent speech and action) when we lack any other way to express our feelings, or means to carry a burden. 

Of course, anger is also a response to vulnerability; but is what we experience when manifesting anger, merely "what remains of its essence"?  Is it to be reduced to our inability to “hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with clarity and breadth of our whole being”?  Of course, random acts of violence are responses to powerlessness, but where is love; what is it that we are loving?  What about ‘road rage’ or the drunken violence that spills out onto our cities’ pavements on Saturday nights? 

I’m answering my own questions.  I can see that understanding the many faces of fear is key.  I can appreciate that what we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality, "by being a complete but absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence."  No bad thing if, by understanding it, anger is disempowered, but I am still left wondering how anger relates to compassion for self.  We are not always good at looking after ourselves - we don’t necessarily know what’s best.   Is Whyte talking about protecting ourselves?  But just what is anger's true internal essence?  

Whyte maintains that “anger truly felt at its centre is the essential living flame of being fully alive, and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world.”  Isn't this another way of saying that anger isn’t a good thing? Because I'm left with the distinct impression that anger is an inappropriate response.  Is this all that Whyte is saying; that anger is a quality? 

I am not saying Whyte’s wrong, but it’s going to take me a little time to get my head around his take on anger (!)  It could be, of course, that I don't altogether understand what he's saying...

If you do, then please enlighten me.  It can't be that difficult.

52 Ordinary Words: Ambition

© Sophia Roberts

Ambition is something I wish I’d had more, not less, of.  P and I often bemoan our lack of it, because - over and above a need to keep roofs over our heads - neither of us has felt driven to achieve a great deal; we’ve not been inclined to single-mindedly pursue any one goal.  In her case I suspect it’s been a matter of being spoilt for choice (P’s so talented on a lot of fronts that she just can’t decide what it is she should be doing, at any one time), but I suspect that my disinclination has had more to do with not being talented enough at any one thing, being something of a Jack of many trades, but master of none.   And maybe, just maybe a little bit lazy…

Mind, for most of my life I’ve been prone to the sort of perfectionism that means nothing ever gets started, let alone completed (I mean what is the point of doing something if the result's not going to be flawless?), but I’ve noticed that something’s shifted. Maybe it’s because I’m older – and hopefully wiser – but my relationship to how I could achieve success has been modified.

I sometimes think I must have been a very late developer, because I had never really considered that all the people whom I deemed successful had endorsed the Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, which little book T gave me a couple of years ago.

On reading this I was intrigued to discover that I had committed to the strategies it outlined half-heartedly, at best.  Was this because most of the ideas were head and not heart-centred?  Probably, but head thinking (aka common sense) has never been one of my fortés.  

I applied some of the maxims, but I still didn’t feel ambitious, although I was bugged by a sense of having failed and/or messed up, somewhere along the way.  I was dissatisfied.

And then I discovered Daniella LaPorte and The DesireMap: A Guide to Creating Goals with Soul - chasing the feeling and not the goal. Once I'd desired to feel satisfied, radiant, inspired, connected and joyful, I then considered the empowered choices I needed to make in order to generate the desired outcomes – to give the desired feelings the best possible chance.

Whilst I am not a fan of what I call fluffy spirituality I do believe that releasing sincere intentions (and letting go of expectations) had a knock-on effect.  Several years down the line this has all come to pass.  I feel the way I wanted to!  I have discovered the power of soul-centered goals and not fixed goals.

So, in late middle age, I have come to appreciate the importance of desire.  I note that David Whyte, in his book Consolations, considers that ‘ambition is frozen desire.’  But I think he’s being a little harsh.  I can agree that a vocation can suffer from too much ambition (because vocations aren’t usually about targets), but a little ambition is no bad thing; it promotes clear-sighted focus.  If the energy of ambition required of us to stay on a course of action is not inordinate then why not apply a little, but not too much?  I think he must mean it’s when ambition is aligned with the unscrupulous that it becomes positively harmful.

But perhaps we are arguing semantics.  Originally from the Latin ambitionem (nominative ambitio), ambition is "a going around," especially to solicit votes; hence "a striving for favour, courting, flattery; a desire for honour, thirst for popularity."  It has become associated with an "eager or inordinate desire of honour or preferment."  If this is what Whyte means then I see exactly where he’s coming from.  We all know people who personify this sort of ambition. 

Of course, as Whyte says, “a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves” and we should be expected to be humbled, simplified and enlightened “about the hidden core nature of the work that enticed in the first place.”  But what harm a little ambition if it serves our vocation, and not our own controlling ego? For a "true vocation always metamorphoses both ambition and failure into compassion and understanding for others.” 

There are many reasons why I missed out on my life’s calling, but I really don’t think overarching ambition was to blame. If there’d been some stepping stones along my way they would have helped, and not hindered my passage.  At the very least they would have been a start.  I didn’t have a clue where I was headed; there was no direction home. 

If in my later years I have arrived at the self-same point that vocation always intended then I do believe this has had more to do with luck than judgement; and certainly not with ambition. 

I will, at least, escape the perils of the essential falsity that Whyte elaborates on.  Indeed, if it has taken me until now to have found a road to walk on then I feel privileged – the wait will have been worth it. 

Maybe I was lacking in aspiration, or do I mean inspiration…   Words, words, words (!) 

52 Ordinary Words: Alone

In lonely places, be a crowd unto yourself ~ Michel de Montaigne (© Sophia Roberts)

Together with other members of Kim Manley Ort’s Google+ group, Adventures in Seeing, I’m using David Whyte's Book, Consolations to reflect on a word a week.  Our first word is Alone.

Extroverts are said to find their own company unacceptable, which was never entirely true for me. I liked own company, occasionally; and I was fine, if I could choose when and where I found myself alone.

It wasn’t until illness forced me into a relatively solitary lifestyle – which obliged me to spend a lot of time on my own – that I began to appreciate how good it is to be alone; and to live in silence. Indeed, once I began to really appreciate the latter I found myself enjoying being alone for considerable periods of time. 

But everything I now know came about because I was metaphorically thrown in at the deep end; I could either sink or swim. For me, necessity was the mother of invention.  

I am not a naturally contemplative person, but I am a spiritual one, so I knew there had to be an answer to my question, “What am I supposed to do with this great chasm that’s opened up,before me?”  Of course it wasn’t as simple as that.  I was obliged to ask myself several hard questions and I had to learn to listen - to really listen - to the voice of my inner wisdom: that still, small voice of calm.

Whyte says that, in order to benefit from solitude, we must be prepared, like a snake, to shed our outer skin.  And as my old life fell away - and silence became my friend - I began to hear a different story and then, eventually, no story at all.  I lost the need to know.  I became comfortable with not knowing; for I had lost the need to ‘interpret and force the story from too small and too complicated a perspective.’  I learnt to honour myself, by choosing to let myself - and others - be...

Whyte maintains that this quality of aloneness does not need the physical conditions of an empty and isolated terrain to experience ‘contemplative intimacy with the unknown,’ but I beg to differ.  I do need to be alone for several hours in each and every day and for a couple of days in every week; otherwise I cease to feel centered and grounded.  But I do agree that my disinclination to answer the telephone or to reply to an email immediately is viewed with suspicion – as if there’s something wrong with me!

In the fullness of time I hope I do hone the discipline - what Whyte calls ‘a sense of imminent aloneness' - because I want to ‘understand the singularity of human existence whilst experiencing the deep physical current that binds us to others,’ without having to physically disconnect myself from the presence of other people. This may take some time.

Until then I am happy to attest that Marianne Moore got it right; ‘The cure for loneliness is solitude.’