Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising.
David WhyteRead
Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
Interpretation
The absence of challenge or intensity in life can lead to a feeling of emptiness and disconnection.
David Whyte's quote speaks to the idea that without the challenges or 'edges' in our lives, we may fall into a state of numbness where we feel disconnected from our emotions and experiences. It suggests that it is the difficulties and intense moments that give life its meaning and vibrancy, rather than leading to despair, they can lead to deeper awareness and appreciation.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising.
Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.
By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.
The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears
The severest test of work today, is not of our strategies, but of our imaginations and identities.
We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming, as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
β¦ and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for youβeither by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.
People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.
Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
Wall Street is always too biased toward short-term profitability and biased against long-term growth.
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