On Some Additions to Introspective Psychology

an essay and a poem

All images in this edition by Vladlen Lysenko

We lose out on so much of life because we know lesser and lesser of simplicity. We find knots where none exist. We tie ourselves up when there is nobody out to do it. What is it about the wiring of our brains that we revel in complexity and then dream of a simpler life?

It is the nature of the world we live in that pushes us towards choices and then watches in glee as we careen over the cliff. But life is nothing if not of the present and the persistent.

As a species we want to hurry - noodles in two minutes, love at first sight. Impossible deadlines and  divorce in a jiffy. Impatient to reach, desperate to get out. We have forgotten to linger, to let things find their own resolutions. We force issues, we lean into people. We seek marathons and then want to run them as 100 metre dashes. And in love?

In love we want eternities in our honeymoon, and honeymoons for our lives. There’s nothing which can possibly stop us from the enormity of life being taken as condensed editions of time itself. But the dynamics of the evolution of anything are only revealed to the one who’s patient.

Relationships evolve not over days, months or even years, but over lifetimes.

Finding familiarity is a function of patient excavation and not a case of fast dating. We need the night, we need the sunbeam, we have to weather the storms and seek shelter in the rain, we have to cook terrible meals and see sublime sunsets, we have to be terrible lovers and caring compatriots, we have to have a difficult child who we raise together to figure the blessing in our lives. The journey has to find the terror of the Tibetan highlands and the grandeur of the New Zealander passes. It has to take in the best and the worst. To find us naked and clothed, to see us alone and with witnesses. And then, and then only, can we say that we’ve found life in all its myriad shades and have known people as the stones or jewels that they truly are.

The Poem

I started the day by boiling water

and holding teabags in the steam.

I could have made a cup for you

but you were sleeping

with your myth open

to the cadence of a tiny snore.

           You are somewhere 

dreaming of shorelines. 

.

Instead

of sitting by the window, I pull the chair

beside your bed and wait

for the morning’s first sunbeam

to find you out.

.

          (Sometimes 

we need quietude 

to know someone we’ve known for years.)

.

I think of me as middle earth 

between waste to wealth

as you refuse

to think of me

as anything less than gold.

.

I want you to open your eyes

and see me before anything else

and see me again, as I shamelessly

let tears fall in the tea,

as if my love despaired to get somewhere.

.

You will touch my cheek tenderly.

.

And I would know a caress

is often a continuum,

and I would know

you were dreaming of me.

Hear the poem

If you like this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life’s lucidities:

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I take out The Uncuts for the sheer delight of creation - and the hope that it gives you both pleasure and pause. It’s free, but not cheap. And all I ask of you is - do share it with someone who you feel would enjoy it!