Compass No.21
The David Whyte edition
Thought provoking quote
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.- Poet David Whyte from “What to Remember When Waking”
Whyte’s message is one that I am, however imperfectly and unreliably, endeavoring to try and live. That is, the idea that too much planning can limit us in ways we don’t always see, whereas living with presence and authenticity can help us access wisdom and untapped potential that was previously dormant.
Podcast insights that stayed with me
Continuing with the David Whyte theme and sharing some highlights from an interview he did with Tim Ferris.
Whyte asserts that one of the great practices of human life is catching up with who we are becoming. He calls this, “the part of you that lies behind the horizon of your understanding.”
“This part of you that lies below the horizon of your understanding is the part of you that’s already matured into the next dispensation of your existence. It doesn’t need the same things that you think you need at the surface of your life now. And so you know intuitively that if you drop below that horizon, your surface life will fall apart, and so might many of your friendships or relationships, you don’t know, they may or they may not, but you’re afraid. You’re afraid that you’re putting things in jeopardy, and this is why we turn our face away from that edge of maturation.”
Whyte has been a long term practitioner of zen buddhism, which inspired his essay “Zen” from his new book Consolations II. In the essay, Whyte writes about a central tenet of the zen philosophy. That is, accepting heartbreak and acknowledging it as a natural part of life versus seeing it as something to suppress or avoid.
He told Tim, “All of us spend so much time trying to find a path, where we won’t have our heart broken. And really, the only way you can find a path where your heart won’t break is by not caring. Finding a path where you don’t care about things or other people, that’s the ultimate protection against heartbreak.”
On the invitation of poetry
“I’d say the whole invitation from poetry is that it’s possible to speak what you think is impossible to say. And once you’ve said it, you are freed into a larger territory. And you will eventually make a prison of that territory too, but that’s going to be the end of that season. And you’ll learn how to get out of the prison earlier. You’ll be able to recognize when you’re impersonating yourself instead of being yourself.”
Question inspired by a recent interview
I’ll leave you with a few questions inspired by Whyte’s work:
Where in life are you currently guilty of over-planning? Where could you benefit from greater presence?
In what ways are you trying to avoid heartbreak?