The busyness of the day-to-day grinds from morning to night. Practicality and “reality” dominate and reign supreme. The tiny voice of the soul whispers, maybe falls silent. Have we created an artificial dichotomy, that ensures mutual destruction? Has a symbiotic relationship been severed, without us even realizing?
Yet, we do realize. We sense a hollowness, a crack in wholeness, an absence of fulfillment. We struggle to define the problem, but feel a cold wind blow through empty rooms.
“By definition, soul evades the cage of definition. It is the indefinable essence of a person’s spirit and being. It can never be touched and yet the merest hint of its absence causes immediate distress.”
-David Whyte (The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America)
When we allow pressures of time, the bottom line, the rigidity of schedules to overwhelm us and surround us with spaces of sterility and inflexibility, we sweep our lives clear of the wondrous, intertwined threads of compassion, connection and creativity of the soul. We create a zero-sum game.
In his book, The Heart Aroused, poet, David Whyte, wades into the world of corporate America, challenging both his beliefs about the business world and the business world’s beliefs about the lives of poets.
“The poet needs the practicalities of making a living to test and temper the lyricism of insight and observation. The corporation needs the poet’s insight and powers of attention in order to weave the inner world of soul and creativity with the outer world of form and matter.”
This conflict is not new and in fact, may never end. Practicality and soul together define the messy business of being alive and human. We cannot wait for permission to bridge the divide. It behooves us to be the alchemist’s crucible where these two can mingle and create the transformed whole.
How do the practical and the soul
and
the soul and the practical meet within you?
