Everything is Waiting for You
by David Whyte
Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
I recently attended a short workshop led by Bhanu Joy Harrison, and she shared this poem written by David Whyte.
You know you’ve found a good poem when you want to re-read it again and again immediately after discovery. When you want to close your eyes and have it read to you so you can live between the lines more deeply.
David’s words touch on something that I think about often, and even more so these days. The fact that we are always living in conversation with everything around us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Just the other day, the idea struck me to write a post about those special micro-moments and memories we share with others that can only really occur over time spent living in close relationship with someone else. The inside jokes. The memories of sharing and building a home together. The small ways you notice each other growing, changing, and aging alongside one another. The deep talks that are best massaged out after spending time together. The ways you attune to one another’s daily rhythms and routines, and how much you notice and learn about each other through bearing witness to them day after day.
This kind of relationality between humans is intricate and beautiful.
But, really, we live in relationship with everything. Not just other humans. And while we love to put ourselves at the center of everything all the time (because we’re human and have fabulous egos)... “to deny the intimacy of your surroundings” is to miss out on the magic of simply being in the world. With everything. Every animal, tree, rock, house, car, toaster oven - you name it.
“Inanimate” objects are animated by our presence and engagement with them. Which means that all of the world can be alive to you if you let it.
Children naturally live this way without instruction. But adults write it off as simply childish playtime that eventually they grow out of (or are bullied out of) in order to be a part of the “real world”.
But what if this nature was something we grow into rather than out of? Something that evolves, as we mature, into a deep felt sense of connecting with the world. Something that expands our perception. Something that supports our inherent nature as relational beings with all things, not just other humans.
Far from immature, this way of relating with the world around us allows us to become more compassionate, more peaceful, and (arguably) more interesting.
Annie Dillard’s quote comes to mind as I write this:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
What happens when we start inviting the world around us into our days? When we start to ease into the conversation with our surroundings?
This conversation that started before we were born.
That continues on for our entire lives.
I’ve found it’s kind of like picking back up with an old friend, feeling like no time has passed. A kind of conversation that continues evolving, but always feels like home.