Love After Love: A Poetic Exploration (Part 5/5)

Issue #17

Welcome to the final section of our five part reflection on Derek Walcott’s poem, “Love After Love.” As always, we suggest that with each installment, you review his brief poem. Please see our first part of this mini-series for the poem.

Here the poet/we are finally saying, “Enough with all the drama. Come home to your true self.” There is a sense of true resolution in this. We hope you enjoy and perhaps consider reading all five sections again. Let’s begin with “chapter” 13.

Thirteen: Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror.

This section of the poem is not a guide to housecleaning. Some may indeed find it helpful to “take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes” but these are the physical objects, as important as they are or have become. Sometimes loss can make them feel all the more valuable to us as that is all we have left of what is gone. There is the internal psychic energy that is wrapped around the objects and that psychic energy is often wrapped around our mind and body, often leading to sadness and longing. Sometimes it is helpful to remove the items that spark painful emotional reactions that lead us to focus externally rather than internally. Some may need to throw away the reminders while others may be content to put them in a box addressed “memories from another time.” In the end, it is the psychic space which needs the most amount of work. That is where the chaotic thoughts and brokenness reside. Taking down the reminders of a now ended love, an unrequited love, or a former job may be quite necessary as part of the grieving process. The key is not to just lose ourselves in another person or another job, but to do as the poet suggests: to peel our own image from the mirror – to reclaim who we are ourselves, the person who got lost in the relationship, in the job, in whatever it is that is now gone. 

“Desperate notes” is an interesting phrase here. Are those the desperate notes that the poet wrote to himself, as in a journal? Or perhaps the poet may have received desperate notes as we would receive now texts or emails. In our electronic age, we can keep our (desperate) communication in the palm of our hand to relive over and over. It may feel good to read those texts and emails or they may make us feel painfully embarrassed or angry. More than likely, no matter what, those messages will stir up a sense of longing and loss. We are unlikely to find resolution in reading and re-reading them. They are likely nothing more than a dead end. Sometimes, even though we know that there is nothing left to draw from them, we feel compelled to do so anyway. Something else is needed. Let’s look at it through a psychological lens.

Jung discussed the greater “self” in terms of individuation. June Singer wrote: “The process of individuation, as it is experienced in analysis, requires a long and laborious process of pulling together all those fragmented and chaotic bits and pieces of unconscious personalities, into an integrated whole which is conscious of itself and the way in which it works.” (Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology, p. 143).

The ideal of “arriving at one’s true self” is not terribly likely. It is something to which one aspires. We all get caught up in the self that presents a certain way and we all adapt to our circumstances. There comes a time, however, when greater integration becomes possible. We move from the external with the love letters, photographs, and the desperate notes to the internal world. One wonders if that image in the mirror represents the true self or at least a truer self – the one you greeted “arriving at your own door, in your own mirror.”

In order to do this, as Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory noted in My Dinner with Andre, you have to turn off the noise. The conversation between them captures many of these themes quite well. Andre had gotten quite lost in his life and says to his friend Wallace in the screenplay:

…I just had to put myself into a kind of training program to learn how to be a human being. I mean, what did I feel about anything? I don’t know. What kind of things did I like? What kind of people did I really want to be with? You know. And the only way I could think to find out was to cut out all the noise around me and stop performing for a few moments and just listen to what was inside me. (p. 108).

We sometimes think of pictures from childhood as providing a glimpse into that truer self before the persona paved over what came so naturally to that child before that child spent so much time adapting to family, to circumstances, and to the expectations of society. What did that child know that you now need to re-learn? How do you invite that child to the table to feast and let them be themselves? That child did not need a training program in how to be a human being. There is wisdom in our younger self.

Reflection: This part is all, in the end, about calm, about turning off the noise. How do you turn off the noise, disconnect from the electronic world, and reconnect with your truer self. Write down a list of things you can do to expand the time you spend in ways that bring you peace and calm. What are the things you do that settle your soul? Very often these are things that bring us a quiet sense of genuine contentment. 

Fourteen: Feast on your life

When we think of a “feast” what comes to mind? People? A large meal? A big table? What does it mean to feast on your life? This is a different kind of feast. It is perhaps not the extroverted gathering of many…or perhaps it is the gathering of many parts of ourselves. Imagine reuniting with the “family” that is you, all those various elements of the self, parts wanted and not wanted, but all of them comprising who each of us is. Such would certainly fit in with a more Jungian framework of inviting all parts of who we are, of who we have become. How do we gather all those parts into one somewhat coherent sense of self? And it will always be a “somewhat” coherent sense of self. It will never be that the definitive self emerges fully out of the water. But it has to be a self that is bigger than the acculturated false self and broken parts of selves that come about through adapting to others all the time.

We invite all those disparate parts of ourselves into the feast with joy and laughter. It is like the wonderful poem by Rumi. “The Guest House:”

The Guest House

​

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

​

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

​

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

​

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

​

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

​

(translation by Coleman Barks)

The poet is inviting us to see the bounty of our life, especially of one’s inner life. They will all come to the feast, but as parts that we recognize served a role. They are parts of us that may have arisen from trying to survive a dysfunctional family, trauma, pain, or any number of things. When we find our truer self, we find we don’t need them anymore. There is no reason to be angry at those parts, but we can now let them go. Enough with the exterior, the adaptation, the false self. Instead, go inward and reconnect with that true self, “the stranger who has loved you all your life.” It is time for the true self to emerge.

Reflection: What would it be like to welcome all those parts into your “home,” appreciate the role each may have served, thank them, and then just keep those truer parts of yourself as you dismiss the others. They will not be perfect, but they will be the parts of you that are, in the deepest sense, most you. Throw a feast and then savor your returning home to your truer self.

Concluding Thoughts

There are some wonderful quotes on the internet, often attributed to some famous person, but it was nothing they ever said. There is a long one attributed to Albert Camus, only one line of which he actually wrote, but it is a beautiful line. It is from his essay, “Return to Tipasa” (1953). He wrote, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there lay in me an invincible summer.” (Camus, Personal Writings, p. 182.) 

To some degree, that invincible summer is our suchness, our core, our home. It is who we are and it is enough. Coming home to one’s true or truer self is a quest; it is a hero’s journey. As mentioned above, it is not all about self-love, but some degree of self-love or, if you prefer, self-acceptance, is necessary. We’ve all heard variations of the following: “Gosh, if I treated my friends the way I treat myself, I would not have any friends.” Many of us constantly criticize ourselves in ways we would never to a friend. It is like we are an “acceptable target.”

James Baldwin wrote, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” (The Fire Next Time.) The idea that true love “takes off the masks” that we feel our necessary to our survival is a bold and statement about true love. Often, we have spent a lifetime creating those masks, knowing on some deep level that even if those masks fooled others, they did not entirely fool ourselves. It is understandable if we fear losing whatever bit of love we experience if we take off those masks.

Internalizing “Love After Love” can be an important reminder to at least arrange a ceasefire with ourselves, to quiet the inner critic, to say, “Enough.” Intellectually, we all know that the inner bashing only does harm. What would it take for you to just have a ceasefire with yourself? The very thought of it could lead to feelings of greater peace and calm. So much of the time we are fighting off those inner voices from childhood, those internalized messages that we, we as we really are, are just simply not good enough.

In “Love After Love,” Derek Walcott gave us a new way of framing coming home. Sometimes after so much struggle and effort to resist being who we really are, we finally get too tired of pretending that we feel a certain way or that we like doing certain things when we only think we should. We get honest with ourselves about what matters to us, how we want to spend our time, with whom we want to be, and what we want to do in terms of work, our community, and our growth as a person.

Along the way, think about how you might encourage others to find their truer self. Be that person who really knows another and delights in who they are – warts and all. Try to not encourage the compliant aspects of yourself or others, for that is the soil of the false self.

Mary Oliver, closes her poem, “When Death Comes,” closes with this line: “I don’t want to simply have visited this world.” Her poetry breathed the beauty of living in this world, of being part of this world. You are here and that is good. Somedays it may feel awful, but you are alive. Go find who you really are and stop living the life you were told was yours. Go find that truer self and fall in love with who that person is and what they can give to the world. It is a heroic journey in its own manner. Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), wrote:

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all times have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. (p. 25).

We are able to feast upon our life, in the end, as individuals in the company of others, connected but still individuated. When we have come home to who we really are after all the struggles, we can be free. Give wine. Give bread. Feast on your life.

Thank you for travelling down this road with us. Derek Walcott gave us all so much to consider. It is our hope that this venture has helped you come closer to your true self – the self that has been waiting for you all these years.

Wishing you joy as you re-connect with that wonderful self,

Jim and Linda

* Ka-tet - A group of people bound together by ka (destiny) for a sense of purpose. Credit: Stephen King from his novel, The Gunslinger.

TEO Ka-tet is the property of James Burke and Linda Pierce operating as TEOconsulting, LLC

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Jim@teoconsulting.org

Linda@teoconsulting.org