Poetic Wisdom: A Gift for Leaders
What does poetry have to do with leadership?
A whole lot. Opening our minds and hearts to new views and vistas is one gift of poetry. To imagine a better future, to glimpse infinite possibility, to infuse blues with hope, poetry and a poetic sensibility are essential.
Facts, figures, and metrics of quantification will take us only so far. Poetry provides a vision without which the people perish. Poetry helps us see the world and our lives in fresh ways on wings of image and theme, metaphor and message.
David Whyte
One of our favorite contemporary poets, David Whyte, wonderfully integrates leadership and organizational work with and through his poetic sensibility.
Jewel and I give thanks, deep within
Insights reverberate
crossroads of inner life and outer expression
David Whyte channels this quality, this keen discernment when reciting his writing.
We resonate with the way he
repeats a line or a whole poem
varying pace and inflection just so
like jazz
yet again, a melodic line or improvisational riff
conversational nature
nuance
landing in heart of mind and body anew
Playful work such as Whyte’s evoke fireside tale-telling times, maintaining interest and attention so intention blooms like sunrise at dawn.
Read and then listen deeply, deeply listen to one of Whyte’s poems: “Everything Is Waiting For You.”
We chose it because of the poem’s symmetry with our focus on the necessary solo reflection and inner work required for the challenge of leadership today while reminding us that we’re never truly alone.
EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
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 courage.
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.
—David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
Rumi
Here’s an example by another perennial favorite, the 13th-century poet and mystic Rumi.
His poem “The Guest House” paints a perspective on everyday life that reminds us of the wisdom of the blues as poetry.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
—Jalal al-Din Rumi
In this season of giving thanks, such poetry is a gift that keeps on giving, so ruminate. (Sorry, just couldn’t resist that Rumi-riff.)
Considering the unexpected visitor, welcoming the unwelcome events in our lives is an angle of vision that as leaders we’d be wise to adopt, to better adapt to the inevitability of syncopation.
If we frame “negatives” with equanimity, knowing that a “crowd of sorrows” may clear the way for “some new delight,” a momentary space of possibility opens, like the sayings “this too shall pass” and “don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Yet Rumi swings the wisdom to a higher altitude than cliché by suggesting that we greet the “dark thought, the shame, the malice” at the door laughing, come on in, sit down, as in Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache.”
The comic aspect of the tragi-comic blues dynamic opens a doorway to a Buddha-like smile of understanding and compassion, making the burdens, the heaviness, of the human condition a bit lighter.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
We do hope you’ll enjoy this video version and rendition of “The Guest House”: