Choose poetry - the art of a visionary life
I feel some big shifts and changes happening in me recently. The things I’ve been working towards over the last two to three years are making way for new things. I’ve been chasing things that have not been bringing me the freedom, joy and peace that I seek.
A little while before Christmas, I heard a little voice in my head that asked: “Kamsin, why do you keep choosing business over poetry?”
And I didn’t mean business necessarily in a literal sense, as in working for myself to bring in an income. Or poetry in the narrow sense of writing poems.
I think what my inner voice was getting at was a question about my inner orientation, what was I aiming for and how I was making choices and decisions about how to spend my time.
So, one could write and publish poems (or make art) with a business orientation and one could equally do business but in a way that is oriented towards poetry.
Say what? Allow me to use language to try to explain what is essentially seeking a reality which sits just beyond the edge of words.
Business as an Orientation to the World
Business = processes, systems, numbers, results, hustle, constantly trying to prove and improve myself, growth as plotted on a graph that tracks upwards from left to right, productivity and getting sh*t done.
When oriented towards business, I was trying to fill a pre-defined role in society in order to fit in, serve a purpose for other people. It was looking to other people - the gurus and experts - to provide the answers I needed about how to spend my time and live my life.
Business is trying to manipulate outcomes through proven processes and techniques that offer guaranteed results. It is an attempt to control ourselves and others.
Language is a tool used for those ends. (copy)Writing is effective when it persuades, manipulates, and controls the way others respond.
Business costs. It’s all about mitigating risk and planning to achieve goals and outcomes decided on in advance.
Poetry (or art) as an Orientation to the World
Poetry = beauty, meaning, depth, love, joy, peace, creativity, growth that is cyclical and iterative as in nature, which embraces cycles of both blossoming and decay. It is living in the gap, the liminal space, between my felt sense of truth and reality and my ability to express that through words and images.
Poetry is where I get to be myself, where my inner compass and personal integrity inform how to live and what to do next.
Poetry is free. It embraces risks, even if that might feel scary; it’s taking life one step at a time, with space for tangents, detours and side-tracks. The only goal is a life well-lived.
Business is a means to an end. Poetry is the end in itself.
Poetry first business second
Just to be clear, I’m not criticising business, per se. We all need meaningful ways to make money and contribute to society. Structures, processes and systems are important and have a place in the world.
I’m not having a discussion about capitalism or corporate greed or any of that. Mostly because it’s a huge topic and I’m weary of any black and white discussion which labels a system evil and which creates monsters and villans.
We live in a world where we need money to survive. Financial stability is important. It’s much harder to choose poetry or art if you have to worry about putting food on the table!
But like I said, huge topic which I don’t want to spend too much time on here.
What I want is to talk about the internal state I want to live from - and the question “why do I keep choosing business and not poetry?” was a prompt to bring me back to myself.
I hope that makes at least some sense?!!
The Visionary and the Psychologist
I recently heard someone talking about a concept from Jung, which perhaps helps to expand on what I’m trying to get at. While it was being discussed in a different context, the basic idea was that you can approach things from a visionary perspective or from a psychological one.
Very briefly, the idea was that approaching things as a visionary was about living in the questions and the discomfort of what is unknown, unseen, and not yet revealed to us. It’s an openness to allowing unfolding and living in a universe that is not in any hurry to give us what we want when we think we want it!
Psychology, on the other hand, was about meanings and definitions and what can be known and seen, explained and understood.
Full disclaimer, I’ve never read or studied Jung, so I’m purely going off the explanation of someone else here!
Anyway, Jung was a psychologist, so I doubt he elevated one perspective over the other. It’s a very human tendency to want our way of being in the world to be the best or the most enlightened.
But that’s not what I want to say here at all. I mean, I deeply believe that we need business, we need psychology; we need structure and meaning and pursuing them is a beautiful and worthwhile thing.
But we also need poets and visionaries.
Learning to connect the passion and the prose
I’ve included a quote from EM Forster’s book Howard’s Way at the top of this newsletter. My undergraduate dissertation was about (if my wonky memory serves) the concept of connection in Forster and Virginia Woolf.
The concept of connecting the passion and the prose and to live united, not fragmented (as the quote suggests) has always fascinated me. To lean on a familiar metaphor, I want to live from my heart, but I don’t want to check my head at the door.
It’s almost as if there’s something about my unique personality that makes this part of my purpose or mission in life. Which sounds really grand, but let me try to explain.
Also, if it feels like I completely changed the topic, I’m trying to get at something which is sitting underneath this apparent dichotomy of poetry/art/ visionary thinking and business/ psychological thinking. Poetry is passion. Business is prose.
Anyway, I’m an INTP and it can be all too easy for me to live out of my thinking brain. Although the T/F part of my personality profile it not clearly defined, I get the same number of items in both T and F sections. Which the instructions state means I’m more a T than an F.
This whole thing is a journey for me to learn to connect my thinking, driven and ambitious side with the joy and magic that poetry offers. Perhaps it’s all too easy for me to let my thinking mind take the driver’s seat.
I get caught up in learning business systems and processes and trying to implement them. The problem is, I never check in which my heart to find out if any of this is bringing me the joy, peace and happiness which are ultimately the goals of my life.
Side note: In Japanese, the word Kokoro (心) can be translated as both heart and/ or mind. The concept covers both meanings in English. It’s almost as if your kokoro is your core, your true essence. Which is perhaps how we use the word heart in English, but as the Forster quote gets at, we need to figure out how to integrate heart and mind if we don’t want to live in fragments.
And let me come back to something I wrote earlier, that poetry is: “living in the gap between my felt sense of truth and reality and my ability to express that through words and images.”
Because I really feel like the words are failing me here, that what I’m trying to express is just beyond my ability to clearly express it.
Let me wrap this up!
All of which is to say, I’m throwing away my vision boards, my plans and projections and lists of what I “need” to do to achieve my desired outcomes. Those things are weighing me down and not lighting me up.
I want to create consistent income streams (aka run a small business). But making money should serve truth and beauty and not the other way around. I don’t want to get lost outsourcing my self-worth. I don’t need to achieve or accomplish anything to be considered a worthwhile member of society.
If business (by my definition above) is trying to control outcomes, then I don’t want to get caught up in trying to control the behaviour of myself and others. Which rarely ends well!
So I’m allowing myself to slow down, change direction and put aside some projects I was working on. I’m following some whispers and nudges I’d been ignoring while I was so caught up in pursuing business over poetry. Perhaps more on that another time. I want to allow these emerging things time and space, rather than trying to rush to draw meaning from them.
One final thought, it’s my love of questions which gives my life meaning, not my quest for answers.
Thank to those who responded to my questions about paid content last week. I really appreciate it.
I didn’t get a huge response so I’m mostly going ahead with what feels most expansive and fun to me.
But, since no one was interested in a book club, I’ve put that idea on hold for now. I will however, be offering twice monthly writing and creativity prompts and activities.
I’m calling theses Poetic Pauses and Creative Release. Watch this space for more.