This poem by David Whyte is an invitation to reflect into the place which troubles you with “tiny but frightening requests”. Often these are parts of ourselves we would rather not feel, see or experience. What are those places?
What does it feel like to be invited to “stop what you are doing right now” and turn towards the “questions which have patiently waited for you until now“?
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
—David Whyte
