Abook must be the axe for the frozen sea within us", wrote Kafka. This book by David Whyte, an Anglo-Irish poet, which I discovered totally by accident in an op-shop, is such a book.
And, being a book, no matter how complex or difficult to understand it may seem to be, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life that little bit better.
I understand life just that little bit better after having read David Whyte's exploration of the underlying meaning of such words as "Friendship" ...
"A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them ... Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way ..."
... and "Regret" ...
"To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life. Fully experienced, regret turns our eyes, attentive and alert to a future possibly lived better than our past."
... and "Run Away" ...
"It is the flight part of the fight or flight deeply in our bodies and our past ... To want to run away is an essence of being human ... To think about fleeing from circumstances, from a marriage, a relationship or from a work is part of the conversation itself and helps us understand the true distilled nature of our own reluctance ... Rarely is it good to run, but we are wiser, more present, more mature, more understanding when we realise we can never flee from the need to run away."
... and there are forty-nine more! Sometimes a book you had never heard of resonates so profoundly that it leaves you wondering how you hadn't come across it before. This is such an essential and beautiful book.
