I spent last weekend at a workshop -- held here on the island, amazingly enough -- with the poet, David Whyte. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I've been a fan of his approach to business consulting since I first encountered his book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, back in the late 90's. So -- given that the workshop was called, enticingly, Poetry in the Woods -- I decided to go. I didn't know much about his poetry, but since he was both a poet and an expert in Organizational Behavior, I figured I couldn't lose.
He never even addressed the organizational behavior side of things (that's okay; I got enough of that in school!); instead it was more like spending a weekend bathing in metaphors: there was music, there were stories, reminiscences of his friendship with the late John O'Donohue, and there were lots of poems, all read aloud to us -- pure heaven. Plus we were each given a lovely journal in which to jot down anything that struck us as we listened, so I have lots of little bits of wisdom floating around that seem to be just waiting for companion images to help plant them a little deeper.
So the one bit of wisdom from that weekend that I thought I'd share with you this morning is this: Sometimes, after having donned a heavy coat for one of those emotional winters in our lives, we just ... forget to take it off. Yes, I know, we're heading into winter now -- at least, for those of us in the northern hemisphere. But is that really where you are, emotionally? Maybe it's time to shed a layer or two; to let the warm breezes of love back in...
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