PART II. POETRY, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY . . .

“Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the while 

I am being carried by great winds across the sky."                            

                           --Ojibway saying (tr. by Robert Bly)

         

Consider  Lao Tzu who, about 2500 years ago in China, used the image of a tree that bends, yielding to a powerful wind and thereby surviving; whereas a tree that stands rigid and resists the wind, can easily snap, and perish. Lao Tzu also spoke of going with the flow, a metaphor that’s been used so commonly over the centuries that it’s become a cliché. Essentially, what it means is that it’s always best to accept the ups and downs of life instead of resisting them. By accepting reality, Lao Tzu says, we learn to cope, and to grow and mature.

Here’s a brief poem by Stephen Crane: 

A man said to the universe, “Sir, I exist!” 

“That fact,” replied the universe, 

“does not create in me a sense of obligation.”

Perhaps if we accepted the philosophy expressed in Crane’s poem, and lived according to that philosophy, we might very well be less anxious and less disappointed when things don’t go our way. Again, the poem may be useful to consult or recite to oneself, when feeling that, for instance, “life isn’t fair,” or “nothing seems to go my way.”  

I appreciate the practical wisdom expressed so convincingly in Mary Oliver’s well-known poem, “The Journey.” The poem begins: “One day you finally knew/what you had to do, and began . . .” So, to paraphrase: You decided to leave, to seek something new in your life, even though those around you were  “shouting” at you: “Mend my life!” But you kept going. It was a “wild night” and the road you were traveling on was “full of fallen/branches and stones.” You kept on moving, and eventually, as the stars “began to burn/through the sheets of clouds,” you began to hear a “new voice,” which you realized was your own voice,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

“The Journey” is based on a very old and I would think universal metaphor: each of us has our own particular journey or path through life, which can be travelled only by us individually. Here is how the French novelist, Marcel Proust, expressed it: 

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves,

after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can

make for us, which no one else can spare us.

You leave your childhood home and go off to college or to a job or the military, or get married. And to do this means having to let go of a former way of life that you’ve been used to for quite some time. Oliver’s ending lines quoted above say that, finally, the only life we can actually save is our own. This revelation can cause some suffering, especially if it involves leaving others behind who depended on us, or whom we depended on. “The Journey” is for me a positive poem: it affirms our need to find our own way in the world, however rugged the journey may be. Yes, we can help others, and encourage and support them, but they have their own journey, just as we have ours. It takes equanimity to be able to hold up our heads and cope with, for example, a crisis, a disease, a death in the family, or the reality of aging. 

Recently I saw a program on TV about cheetahs, and how one day the mother of two young males suddenly abandoned them—making sure they couldn’t follow her. According to the narrator, the mother cheetah knows instinctively that the only way her offspring will survive is if she leaves them. At first, I was thinking, anthropomorphically, that the mother’s action was cruel, since it was fairly obvious that the young males weren’t mature enough to capture and kill, or defend themselves.  But then, as I watched them more and more—chasing prey animals and at first failing to catch any—the mother’s instinctive actions began to make sense to me. 

It happens to be the same for human families: children grow up and eventually must learn to fend for themselves. Or, another familiar way of putting it:  there comes a time when a child must “sink or swim.” It may seem sad and scary to parents, when their children leave home and strike out on their own, but it’s the only way the children will ever be able to make their own life. And then, of course, those children will eventually do the same thing with their own offspring (note the word’s meaning: children “spring off” of their parents into their own life.) And on and on the off-springing goes, generating more and more generations.  

Many of us are aware of Alfred (Lord) Tennyson’s famous ending line from his poem “Ulysses,” a line which was deservedly (and permanently) emblazoned on a wall in Olympic Village in London, to celebrate the 2012 Olympic Games:

          . . . to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tennyson’s line is a powerful, inspirational statement about never giving up, about going forward until you succeed—an idea that works especially well in a sporting  context. And yet, as I mentioned in connection with the ancient Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, there is also power and courage in yielding. It’s of course generally best to go forward with boldness, and to never give up. But sometimes the wiser—and also courageous—choice is to give with reality, with what is—to acquiesce, the way a tree bends in the wind. It’s similar to the way a judo master can give with an offensive move by an opponent, so as to turn the aggressor’s power back onto the aggressor. 

According to the AA prayer/poem, it takes “serenity to accept the things we can’t change, courage to change the things we can change, and wisdom to know the difference.” Note again, the importance of acceptance—of having to let go of the past. Meditation, an Eastern practice that goes back thousands of years—and which is becoming more and more common in Western countries such as the U.S—also encourages acceptance, or letting go of the past. It too, emphasizes living in the present moment, the NOW.  

Here’s a short poem called “Prayer” by the contemporary American poet, Galway Kinnell:  

Whatever happens. Whatever

is is is what I want. 

Only that. But that.

Kinnell’s poem is an excellent example of how poetry and philosophy can exist together. It agrees completely with Epictetus, Lao Tzu, and other sages of the past, as well as recent sages and healers, such as Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle. 

But what the poet created here is also a fine poem. Have you ever in your life seen three “is’s” in a row, each of them with a different meaning? 

Now, here’s something you might want to try for yourself: Make a poem with three of the same words in it—maybe even in a row—and make sure that each word has a separate meaning. And make some kind of statement in your poem—maybe you’d like to respond to a philosophical notion that interests you.  

What sayings or poems by thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, poets and others, do you tend to remember (or keep on hand, maybe pinned to a wall in your office, or in your billfold or purse), because they have been and still are helpful to you in difficult times? 

          Can you match a particular favorite saying or poem with a particular event in your life, and say how reading it or recalling it helped you deal with something that was troubling?

         

Let me recommend a couple of books in the field of poetry therapy: THE HEALING FOUNTAIN: POETRY THERAPY FOR LIFE’S JOURNEY, edited by Geri Giebel Chavis and Lila Lizabeth Weisberger, and SAVED BY A POEM, by Kim Rosen.