Scan barcode
A review by brontherun
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte
5.0
For a book of micro-essays, this volume is surprisingly useful. This was my first introduction to a David Whyte book, but will happily not be my last. His deep and introspective dive into the words we use to define our emotions and interactions hits the target again, and again, and again.
Particularly timely for some of us rousing from pandemic isolation was the entry on Robustness. While written before COVID was an everyday term, it captures my 2022 world in many ways. "A lack of robustness denotes ill-health, psychological or physical; it can feed on itself. The less contact we have with anything other than our own body, our own rhythm or the way we have arranged our life, the more afraid we can become of the frontier where actual noise, meetings and changes occur. To come out and meet the world again is to heal from isolation, from grief, from illness, from the powers and traumas that first robbed us of that meeting and of a vital sense of presence in the world; to be robust again is to leave the excuses we have made not to risk ourselves and to find ourselves alive once more in the encounter."
BAM! WHAT?!
I may keep this little volume of precious nuggets around, as I think it may prove pretty timeless.
Particularly timely for some of us rousing from pandemic isolation was the entry on Robustness. While written before COVID was an everyday term, it captures my 2022 world in many ways. "A lack of robustness denotes ill-health, psychological or physical; it can feed on itself. The less contact we have with anything other than our own body, our own rhythm or the way we have arranged our life, the more afraid we can become of the frontier where actual noise, meetings and changes occur. To come out and meet the world again is to heal from isolation, from grief, from illness, from the powers and traumas that first robbed us of that meeting and of a vital sense of presence in the world; to be robust again is to leave the excuses we have made not to risk ourselves and to find ourselves alive once more in the encounter."
BAM! WHAT?!
I may keep this little volume of precious nuggets around, as I think it may prove pretty timeless.