To be a poet is to be healthfully possessed with the instinct to stay authentic. In this regard, William Butler Yeats says:
Genius is a crisis that joins the buried self,
for certain moments, to our daily mind.
Much of our daily life is spent making it through that crisis. The difference between the authentic life and the hidden life is that the poet in us seeks opportunities to break through, while our hidden self distorts the task and seeks only opportunities to break from.
I mentioned earlier that the crisis that started me writing was a broken heart, my first deep opportunity to break from or break through. My Dulcinea had auburn hair and lips that knew nothing but the secret of their softness. I was ruined before the glow even thinned. She, of course, left to live her life, and I began to break. In my heartache, I began to utter to myself, to speak freely at the air, and once I healed, I never stopped.
It is important to affirm that this dynamic of releasing our particular genius through the living of our ordinary lives speaks to the poetry of authenticity—not just writing, but of an aliveness that is dormant and waiting to wake in everyone. If surfacing our buried self is what we’re after, loving is how we get there.
So let’s consider love at first sight. While this can certainly happen, it is love at first true seeing that brings us alive, despite the numbness and woundedness that tripping about the world can bring. I can see you every day for years, saying hello at the office. We find each other pleasant and cordial. But this one day, when I am heartsick because my father is dying, and you are too exhausted to keep your mask in place, we see each other deeply and freshly for the first time. And I’m stunned; I never realized it was you. Now, after all these years, we truly meet and love each other completely at first true seeing.
This is how we rediscover the world and the Mystery that informs the world, one true seeing at a time, as the clouds that hover around our head and heart are blown aside unexpectedly.
Yet how do we take in what comes from these fresh, unpacked moments in which meaning presents itself? We do this by committing to the effort to listen, reflect, and express, which are the basic, authentic steps of true perception.
It helps to remember that whatever the process, it can be broken down into basic steps. When a center fielder is in a slump, his batting coach takes him aside and has him return to the basics of his swing. When in sync, the back swing, swing, and follow-through are all one motion. But when faltering, the center fielder must concentrate on each component separately in order to return to his form. Because sometimes we rush our swing and don’t follow through or hang too long in our back swing.
Likewise, when at our best, we take in the world in one sweet motion: listening, reflecting, and expressing in a seamless effort. But when we falter, we need to slow down and recover the individual steps. When we listen, we simply take in things as they are without processing them. When we reflect, we hold what we have seen or heard and circle it, trying to discern what it means. And when we express, we ask ourselves, “How do I feel about what I’ve seen or heard?”
Often, in our fear and pain, we rush these steps into one hurried reach, making conclusions before we’ve had a chance to take things in and reflect. The natural sequence of listening, reflecting, and expressing is tantamount to breathing. When we breathe, we inhale till we reach that still point at the top of our inhalation, where we briefly hold and then exhale. Normally, this is all one motion, but meditation helps us break down our breathing into its basic rhythms. In perceiving, we inhale by listening, reflect at our still point, and then exhale by expressing what we’re feeling back into the world.
To slow down and reclaim the very steps of perception lets us inhabit our authenticity, which lets us keep falling in love with everything and everyone we meet. This renders us vulnerable, malleable, forgeable. Like someone who gasps awake after a deep sleep, we break through and wake, a day at a time, in order to release our gifts into the world.
It is love at first true seeing that brings us alive, despite the numbness and woundedness that tripping about the world can bring.
An Invitation to Listen, Reflect, and Express
• Take a walk and practice listening, reflecting, and expressing as you encounter the world around you. Later, in your journal, write about the series of perceptions you have taken in by describing what you’ve seen and heard, then reflecting on what it all means, and then by expressing what you feel about what you’ve taken in and what you think it means.
• In conversation with a friend or loved one, tell the story of a moment of love at first true seeing that you’ve experienced. Describe the difference between how you experienced the person before and after this awakening. Later, write a reflection or a story about the impact of love at first true seeing.