Whyte's Wise Words

I just listened for the second time to Krista Tippet's interview with David Whyte. Below are some quotations from Whyte's interview that I loved even when I'm wasn't always sure what he meant.

I went back into poetry because I felt like scientific language wasn’t precise enough to describe the experiences that I had in Galapagos.

...we have so many allies in this world, including just the color blue in the sky, which we’re not paying attention to, or the breeze, or the ground beneath our feet. And so this is an invitation to come out of abstraction and back into the world again.

This is another delusion we have that we can get — take a sincere path in life without having our heart broken. And you think about the path of parenting, there’s never been a mother or father since the beginning of time who hasn’t had their heart broken by their children. And nothing traumatic has to happen. All they have to do is grow up.

We have this fixed idea of youthfulness from our teens or our 20s. But, actually, there’s a form of youthfulness you’re supposed to inhabit when you’re in your 70s or your 80s or your 90s. It’s this sense of imminent surprise, of imminent revelation, except the revelation and the discovery is more magnified.

...vulnerability is the underlying, ever present, and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability, we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

We go through those very, very narrow places. And John [O'Donohue] used to talk about how you shaped a more beautiful mind, and that it’s an actual discipline, no matter what circumstances you’re in. The way I interpreted it was the discipline of asking beautiful questions, and that a beautiful question shapes a beautiful mind. And so the ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered.