Work \ werk \ n: an opportunity for discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world.” ~David Whyte
So after a hell raising 2009 where are you with your work? If you were laid off then you may have settled quickly for another less that ideal job. Or perhaps you are at wits end still trying to find one. Or are you exhausted from sitting on pins & needles as layoffs in your office happen around you month after month, relieved on one hand you can still pay your bills yet secretly disappointed that your chance to escape keeps passing you by. Perhaps you simply lost like Dante in the dark woods, with no idea of what or where you should go?
Where ever you are in your work life, I highly recommend two books by David Whyte; Crossing the Unknown Sea, its subtitle the name of this column and The Heart Aroused, Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. These books speak lyrically about how we can be true to our soul and not just true but discover our soul through our work.
David is a poet and a Fortune 500 consultant, which at first sounds about as paradoxical as being a cross maker and a prophet, but David shows us how in fact these two worlds are dependent on each other more than we have realized. His own professional life has had some twist and turns; from a Yorkshire country upbringing to naturalist guide in the Galapagos to award winning poet that consulates in the corporate world. He is honest to admit how he had to work through his own judgments about corporate America and how those judgments were blown to smithereens.
David articulates that corporations will only get our full creativity when they make room for our souls in the office. And he speaks in The Heart Aroused about how this can be done. But of course getting the corporations on board and engaged starts with us. He shows us that the greatest opportunity for discovery and growth is the thing we most often want to get away from: Our work. He points out that “as human beings, we are the one part of creation that can refuse to be itself. Our bodies can be present in our work, but our hearts, minds, and imaginations can be placed firmly in neutral or engaged elsewhere.” Unless we are fully present to what our work is – even if it’s ugly – we will not be able to create anew.
Our conversation with the world is through our work and it is what will assist us in discovering and shaping who we are. Whyte cautions us that our sense of success in life can imprison us as much as our sense of failure.
Where to start? He suggests here:
- Regain Captaincy Over Your Life
Are you utterly who you are? Or are you sleepwalking through your life allowing someone else to captain it other than your authentic self? - Connect to Your Inner Compass
When you were little you felt the pull to new horizons or something outside of what others directed you to do. When did you last connect to this voice? He says that there is something trustable about our original enthusiasms when we are young that point directly to the way we are made. Re-connect to this place or voice within. - Know When Enough is Enough
There are times when we need to say, “Enough.” So we may honor our internal dignity. And it’s amazing how there is an eerie calm that comes upon us when do finally say it. Trust this inner knowing. - Stretch Into Grace
Just like in Mr. Magoo cartoons there are times when a scaffold appears in our lives in the nick of time to catch us as we walk blindly out a window. Be willing to acknowledge that it isn’t always our own craftiness that saves us and our arse, but the beauty of grace. - Speed to a Stop
Everyone moves fast in business and everything is expected to. But if one is lost – speeding up isn’t the way to find our way. We must stop and reassess our map, our resources and our locale. “Speed, ironically, is so often a symptom of total immobility.”
Living consciously in our work life can be at first challenging. Let your 9-5 educate and inform you. When needs and values are met through work that’s when you experience what Joseph Campbell calls bliss and what Kahlil Gibran means when he says “Work is love made visible.” And couldn’t we all use a bit more of that?
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