Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
by David Whyte
updated 19h ago
by David Whyte
updated 19h ago
The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow ourselves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self felt like a thankful death itself, a disappearance, a giving away, overheard in the laughter of friendship, the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as
... See moreDevika Parmar added 18d ago
When we demand a certain specific kind of reciprocation before the revelation has flowered completely we find ourselves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but that did not meet our initial and too specific expectations.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
it is the place we go when we do not want to be found in the same way anymore. We give up hope when certain particular wishes are no longer able to come true and despair is the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago
Human beings are always, and always will be, a frontier between what is known and what is not known. The act of turning any part of the unknown into the known is simply an invitation for an equal measure of the unknown to flow in and re-establish that frontier: to reassert the far inward, as yet unknown horizon of an individual life; to make us wha
... See morerob hardy added 4mo ago
Every transformation has at its heart the need to ask for the right kind of generosity.
Devika Parmar added 18d ago