I don’t read a great deal of poetry, and yet my mother loved and knew so many wonderful verses. So, recently, my good friend and world class artist David LaMure Jr. sent me some inspirational poetry from David Whyte… The following is from one of his poems.
“Find your true inheritance…start close in…don’t take the second step or the third…start with the first thing…close in…the step you don’t want to take…don’t take the second step or the third..start with the first thing…close in…the step you don’t want to take..start with the ground you know…the pale ground beneath your feet…start with your own questions…give up on other people’s questions…don’t let them smother something simple.”
I’ve always said in my speeches that one of the reasons people love sunsets is their beauty, and the fact that that they are on the horizon, and the horizon is something we can never reach. It’s wonderful to get excited about sunsets and horizons…but we can never get there. I think that Whyte is using the second and third steps a bit like I am using the horizon. We get very excited about things in life — like sunsets or horizons, our goals and our unlived lives — but we don’t take even the first step to start the journey.
Keep this firmly in mind: WE CAN GET TO THE SECOND AND THIRD STEPS IF WE START CLOSE IN…TAKING THE FIRST STEP.
