Over the years, I have found that the life of expression has helped to thin what stands between me and life. This is one of the purposes of creativity. The life of expression has, in fact, helped me enter life more than watch it. Poetry has always been a way to point to pockets of life-force that bring us alive and keep us together. To become the poem means that we, ourselves, become the carriers of life-force that hold the world together.
A great example of this comes from the life of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The story goes that on January 3, 1889, he was approached by two policemen after making some sort of public disturbance in the streets of Turin, Italy. It seems he saw a horse being whipped at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, and in that moment, there was nothing between him and the pain of the horse being whipped. And so he ran to the horse, throwing his arms around its neck to protect it. Then he collapsed. He never recovered. Some regard this event as embarrassing, and yet it just might be Nietzsche’s crowning moment of integrity on par with St. Francis of Assisi displaying his unmitigated love for all of God’s creatures.
I find it beautiful and heartbreaking that all the vast and tenacious thinking of such a prodigious mind should undo itself—quite naturally and poignantly—into the compassionate act of protecting a horse from being whipped. All his deep thinking led him, in that moment, to stand between the whip and the whipped. Isn’t this the aim of all writing, of all art? When we can say yes and throw our arms around the hurt one’s neck, then what feels necessary stuns us with its splendor. For all Nietzsche wrote, that one fully lived moment was the poem of his life.
Who knows what this moment is for each of us and when it will appear? Yet I believe that the practice of integrity, the practice of love and truth, and the commitment to a life of expression, whatever its form, help ready us for this moment of becoming the poem.
Inevitably, life is a journey of moving in and out of the light, of falling off course and steering our way back to center. If this is so, then freezing a moment of being on course and calling that success, and freezing a moment of falling off course and calling that failure are useless distinctions. Neither helps us to see or engage the practice of being awake in the stream of life. Once discovering that we are constantly in process, that we are constantly unfolding, the goal is not to solidify our character and views, but to stay devoted to how we—and what we think and feel—evolve.
The purpose of memoir and autobiographical writing, then, is not to chronicle ourselves as the star of our own movie, but to inquire into our changing experience deeply enough and honestly enough that we touch on the common experience of all life. The way a biologist can reveal the dynamics of life by looking at one cell, we can reveal the depths of the human journey by steadfastly rooting our story in the particulars of our own unfolding, looking for where those particulars join with other life. As looking thoroughly at one cell reveals the nature of all cells, looking thoroughly at the heart of our story reveals the nature of all stories.
One reward for aligning our life with other life is that we are then allowed to draw on the strength of what we have in common with all life. When you look at a mountain from a distance, it stands up from the horizon, singular and rugged. But closer up, it’s impossible to tell where the mountain stops and the earth begins. What makes the mountain so steadfast and everlasting is that its core is resting on the foundational core of the earth. Indeed, the very center of the mountain is aligned with the very center of the earth. This makes the mountain strong beyond its own constitution.
In just this way, when we can stand by our core, we’re not just standing on our own constitution but aligning our center with the Center of All Life. In such moments, it’s hard to tell where the individual soul stops and the foundation of all Spirit begins. This alignment opens us to strength beyond our own. By being thoroughly ourselves, we stand on what can last and gain access to all the resources of life. In actuality, the courage to stand by our core until we can align with the core of everything is the beginning of resilience. And the practice of writing, or any other form of expression, helps us to be thoroughly ourselves. Such a practice enables us to stand by our core and to align our center with the Center of All Life.
Until tumbling on the other side of cancer, I never would have imagined that surviving and creating were so close. In fact, in the heat of living, they are identical. In our deepest moments of living, when life writes us, it is the poetic quality of healing that matters, no matter the form of art or truth that carries it. In our complete and honest moments of expression, surviving is entering life and creating as we go, and healing is the moment when the Center of All Life moves through our center as we stand between the whip and the whipped.
As looking thoroughly at one cell reveals the nature of all cells, looking thoroughly at the heart of our story reveals the nature of all stories.
An Invitation to Be a Conduit
• In your journal, describe a time when you were a brief conduit between other living things. What did such a moment offer to those around you, and how did such a moment affect you? Later, write a poem or story about someone who becomes a brief conduit between other living things.
• In conversation with a friend or loved one, discuss what the phrase “Becoming the Poem” means to you.
• Go for a ride or walk and arrive at a place—in a café, in the woods, or in your backyard—where you can be still enough to receive other life. Let other life enter you and leave you. Let life flow through you, and note what it says to you as it moves through. Then, journal the story of this experience.