David Whyte
David Whyte
David Whytewas an English professional footballer who played as a striker...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
sweet darkness doe
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
voice way steps
We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember again as our own.
waiting what-if world
What if the world is holding its breath - waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?
community heartfelt courageous
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.
inspirational real thinking
Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking.
journey sight self
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
carry fault full
Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story; we do not know where we are in the story. We do not know who, ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end.
attempting change eliminate trying
Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity.
brief evocative lost possibilities
Regret is a short, evocative and achingly beautiful word: an elegy to lost possibilities even in its brief annunciation.
include job necessary richer
Things have a way of being richer in the end, a product better made, for the circuitous route we take to include all the elements that are necessary for a job well done.
companions courage gives great poems poetry sets straight
Poetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends.
carries large life poetry
Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves.
close lies necessary relationship truth understanding wanting
Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.
Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation.