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(grossing the
Unknown Work
as a ?il^rimaqe of Identity
author of
The Heart Aroused:
discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world
work \wark\
n:
an opportunity
for
U.S.A. 524-95 Canada $3 5-99
"Then thing
Does
asked:
I
make
is so,
believe that
it
a
so?
firm persuasion that
He
a
replied: All poets
does, and in ages of imagina-
it
tion this firm persuasion removed mountains;
but many are not capable of a firm persuasion
of anything."
—William
It is
the greatest and
nity of our lives
William Blake
—
said,
Blake
most often missed opportu-
to know, as the English poet
what
suasion, to feel vou can
it
to have a firm per-
is
move mountains.
Now
David Whyte brings Blake's words to the tasks that a
occupy most of our waking hours: "To have
firm persuasion in our work
we do world
is
—
to feel that
right for ourselves and
at the exact
same time
—
-is
good
what
for the
one of the great
triumphs of human existence."
Our
greatest
opportunity for discovery and
growth, according to bestselling author and Fortune
500 consultant David Whyte, most often want
we
the thing
in
is
to get away from: our work.
It's
where people spend the majority of their time, and
where many spend
it's
were somewhere it's
else,
much
of
wishing they
it
doing something
else.
And
where people often spend their time not being
present, and not being themselves.
out that "as
human
creation that can refuse to be
can be present
m
Whyte
points
beings we are the one part of itself.
Our
bodies
our work, but our hearts, minds,
and imaginations can be placed firmly
in neutral
or engaged elsewhere."
Being engaged elsewhere souls. Crossing
the
Unknown
Sea
is is
damaging to our
about reawakening
the sleeping captain in us before that soul crashes
on the
rocks.
pilgrimages
—
The book
takes us
on the
to the center of identity
of growth. David
holiest of
and the roots
Whyte, who has been profiled
in
(Continued on back flap)
0103
Crossing
the
Unk
n o
w
n
S
e
a
Also by David
Whyte
NFICTION The Heart Aroused: Poetry
and
the
Preservation of the Soul
m
Corporate America
POETRY Songsfor Coming
Home
Where Many Rivers Meet Fire in the Earth
The House of Belonging
Crossing
the
Unknown
Sea
Work
as
a
Pilgrimage
of Identity
David Whyte
Riverhead Books \
£
H
2
YORK 1
SI RIVERHEAD BOOKS a
member
of
Penguin Putnam
Inc.
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY A
list
10014
of permissions can be found on page 247.
Copyright
© 2001
by David Whyte
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced
in
any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whyte, David. Crossing the
unknown
sea
:
work
as a
pilgrimage of identity /
David Whyte. p.
cm.
ISBN 1-57322-178-3 l.Work.
BJ1498 .W48
I.
Title.
00-046891
2001
174— dc21 Printed in the United States of America
3
This book
5
is
7
9
10
8
6
4
printed on acid-free paper. @)
Book design by Marysarah Quinn
Acknowledgments
To
my wife,
ties
Leslie; her intelligent conversation
on the subtle
identi-
of work, her loving and patient companionship and her under-
standing of the travails of the writer were a constant strength to me.
To
my
daughter Charlotte for her joyous infancy; long
may
she con-
my
tinue to interrupt the strange priorities of the adult world. To
son Brendan for his companionship in the mountains, his humor,
and the long morning sleeps appropriate to allowed
me
to finish the
Edward Wates
his
teenhood
book during our memorable
that
holiday.
To
for the timeless friendship, the single malt whiskey,
the long night walks in Oxford, and the close listening. To John
O'Donohue,
a poetic
and imaginative brother, whose good and
strengthening words during a scintillating literary weekend with
our mothers father,
who
set
me
to rights for the last stretch.
figure largely in
To Bennett White for
Morgan
my
my mother and
inherited understanding of work.
his laughter
and cheerful fortitude. To Val
for excellent cooking, unsurpassable red wine,
much-needed
familial hospitality of
whose encouraging
early
for her intelligent reading
and the
Bovingdon. To Tony Morgan,
morning remarks
sense of promise in the manuscript. To
ters.
To
my
greatly nourished a
assistant Julie
and acute comments on the
Quiring
first
chap-
To Donna Humphreys for her resourceful and meticulous help
with permissions. To Susan Petersen Kennedy,
who hunted me
of the poetic undergrowth to write prose again. To
my
agent
out
Ned
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Leavitt,
who
carried the true spirit of the writer's intentions into
his negotiations.
And
last,
to
my
editor at Riverhead,
Amy
Hertz,
who has a sure and intuitive understanding of the book struggling to be born from
a writer's first imaginative stirrings. This
better for her astute and careful
book
comments than anything
I
is
far
could
have accomplished alone. All the above have contributed to whatever qualities the book
my own.
may
possess;
its
flaws and omissions are
all
FOR THREE LOVES: Leslie,
Charlotte,
A N
I)
Brendan.
You have
set sail
on another ocean
without star or compass
going where the argument leads shattering the certainties of centuries. J
A N
E
T
K.UVEN,
"Respectable Outlaw"
Contents
Beginnings I.
Courage and Conversation: Setting
II.
Out with
a
Firm Persuasion
The Mountain Farm:
A
Stranger at the
Door
9
Mid Ocean III.
At the Cliff Edge of
From IV.
A
Life:
Povverlessness to Participation
31
Star for Navigation:
Ambition, Horizon, and Arrival
62
/vNOut of Ireland: ^-^
A
82
Short Sea Crossing
Arrivals VI.
The Awkward Way
From Exhaustion VII.
The
the
Swan Walks: 113
to Wholeheartedness
Fatal Shore:
139
Arrival and Authenticity
Perspectives VIII.
Outlaw Imaginings:
When the
Real You Wants
Out
153
CONTENTS IX.
A
Marriage with Silence:
Escaping the Prison of
X. Crossing the
Time and Work
Unknown
1
73
Sea:
A Voyage Through the Hours of the Day
1
82
Pilgrimage XI. Keats and Conversation:
The
New and Newly Youthful World of Work
246
Bibliography
247
Permissions
Index
248
[
X
i
V
]
22 7
Beginnings
Courage and Conversation Setting Out with
Then so?
Firm Persuasion
a
asked: Does a firm persuasion that a thing
I
He
replied: All poets believe that
does,
it
is so,
and
make
in ages
imagination thisfirm persuasion removed mountains; hut
it
of
many
are not capable of afirm persuasion of anything.
—W illiam
Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Work work
is
a
very serious matter in almost
in the shelter
of our
world. Through work, families,
create
make
home
human
a difficult
or
all
work in
respects,
whether
the big, wide, dangerous
beings earn for themselves and their
world habitable, and with imagination,
some meaning from what they do and how they do
human approach
to
it is
work can be
naive,
fatalistic,
it.
The
power-mad,
monev-grubbing, unenthusiastic, cvnical, detached, and obsessive. It
can also be
its
selflesslv
mature, revelatorv and
long- reaching effects, and
an individual or society as both, a sky individual
full
life
There
is
giving in the
life
much
as
it
giving;
way
it
mature
all
in
gives back to
has taken. Almost always
of light and dark, with
blowing through
life
it is
the varied weather of an
it.
no hiding from work
in
one form or another. Under
David the great sky of our endeavors
through
seasons toward
its
perspective
is
W
we
h
y
our
live
some kind of
e
t
lives,
growing we hope,
dearly won. Maturity and energy in our
work
human beings but must be adventured and
granted freely to
ered, cultivated and earned.
is
not
discov-
the result of application, dedica-
It is
tion, an indispensable sense of
Any
greater perspective.
humor, and above
a never-ending
all
courageous conversation with ourselves, those with
whom we
whom we serve. It is a long journey; it calls on both
work, and those
the ardors of youth and the perspectives of a longer view.
achieved through
a lifelong
It is
pilgrimage.
William Blake, that unstoppable creator,
both poet and
as
engraver seemed to have a direct and conversational relationship
with the wellsprings of work. Over ual inspiration, a his poverty, to
a lifetime
profound vision and an indomitable
persuasion in our
work
—
that
is
ability,
we could
human
at
art.
firm persuasion. To have a firm
what we do
is
right for our-
the exactly same time
existence.
We
do
feel,
—
is
one of
when we
as
if,
call
in Blake's
words,
we
could
have
move moun-
the world home; and for a while, in our
imaginations, no matter the small size of our apartment, in a spacious
despite
challenging and enlarging and that seems to be doing
something for others, tains, as if
a.
to feel that
and good for the world
the great triumphs of
work
a contin-
follow through with the tiniest details of his
Blake called his sense of dedication
selves
he exhibited
we
dwell
house with endless horizons.
"Myfingers Emit
sparks offire with Expectation of myfuture labours,"
said the passionate Blake, in a letter
to his patron, Hayley.
ment and from
He was
promising plenty of hard work
speaking from a
felt
sense of
fulfill-
the very last part of the eighteenth century, an age
[
•*
]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA when our Western change, an age
ideas of
when
work were going through enormous
the factory was born, and production in and
for itself was first conceived as an imaginative good. But Blake stood
firm amid
it all
in his
essentially nothing
approach to work and in
his writings, saying
had changed. Factory or farm, individuals needed
a sense of belonging in their
work,
a conversation
with something
larger than themselves, a felt participation, and a touch of spiritual fulfillment
and the mysterious generative nature of that
fulfillment.
Blake might have said that they needed a conversation with the angels. Earning
and providing were
all
very well, but once the basics
were met, human beings naturally turned
inward and outward
their
eyes to greater horizons.
Whether
fulfillment lasts for a
of us would not complain of
long or short
its stay. If
month or
appearance in our
its
we cannot
now and
again.
Some
secretly, against
we
will take just the
have experienced fulfillment for
only a few brief hours early on in their
ured everything,
however
lives
have Blake's lifelong experience
of wonder and inspiration through our labors,
merest touch
work
since.
it
lives
Some
and then meas-
have
felt
eager and
engaged by their work for years and then walked into their
one
fine
morning
most
for a lifetime,
office
to find their enthusiasms gone, their energies
spent, their imaginations engaged in secret ways, elsewhere.
To have a^'rm
make
persuasion, to set
a pilgrimage of
tion of
work
lies
is
is
to
our labors, to understand that the consumma-
not only in what
become while accomplishing grimage
out boldly in our work,
we
have done, but
the task. To see
life
who we
and work
have
as a pil-
not a strategy for increased production (though by
understanding the wellsprings of
[
*
human
]
creativity, there is
every
David chance
it
might happen);
it
W
does not
h
y
e
t
mean
that
we
can lay out our
careers in precise stages, clearly and concisely, as to when,
and
how everything should happen. All of our great artistic and reli-
gious traditions take equally great pains to inform us that
never mistake a good
career for
good work.
mate and unpredictable conversation unspoken, and our ular
where
way we hold
life
if it is
is
a creative, inti-
nothing
else,
spoken or
and our work are both the result of the partic-
that passionate conversation. In Blake's sense, a
firm persuasion, was a form of self-knowledge; result,
Life
we must
it
was understood
as a
an outcome, a bounty that came from paying close attention
way each of us
to an astonishing world and the
made
is
differently
and uniquely for that world.
Faith and
Work
Blake saw the great powers of life working on us like a kind of
permanent
gravity field, the currents of life acting and pulling
us according to our particular heft and spiritual weight, our
upon
makeup
and our nature. These currents surround us and inform us whether
we
woods
are in the kitchen or in the office, in the
crowded
in a
ing to Blake,
downtown
we must come
us in an intimate
movement
elevator.
way and
that results
ments. Almost
a.
know
persuasion, accord-
these currents that surround
build a kind of faith from the directional
from
like a sail
to
To have firm
a close conversation
the
it
propels.
tiller,
creates
And
with these
conversing with the wind, every
respond differently to the elements according to vessel
alone, or
the response of the
movement and
sail,
its
sail
ele-
will
shape and the
with a steady hand
direction. In this conversation
6
)
at
no
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA one can get stuck for long; present up;
then
some it is
surface area to
an individual, you simply need to
as
In
life.
Woody Allen's words -.Just show
only a question of direction.
Showing up
for
work
up would be impossible
know enough
is
You would think
difficult.
for living, breathing
of ourselves on a bleak
human
not
beings, but
Monday morning,
co-workers of a bad day, to realize that
as
human
one part of creation
be
itself.
that can refuse to
showing
beings,
Our
we
or certain
we
are the
bodies can be
present in our work, but our hearts, minds, and imaginations can
be placed firmly
in neutral
Faith and
Doubt
or engaged elsewhere.
Sometimes our hiding from others has been so
we c an no longer even
find ourselves
when we want to. We
merged, heavy, immovable, stuck forever making. wing,
I
successful that
in the
mud
of our
lifting
even the deadliest, heaviest part of us up and away, off
must have believed
that every
access to these metaphorical aerodynamics; he
human being
drew
earth or spiralling upward.
woman, someone with
He
thought of the
waken
we must
this
cultivate a kind of faith in the
our circumstances or
to
whole man
inner
artist,
a certain shape that puts us in conversation
around us and the way they to come to our ter
artist as a
coming
utter faith in the conversation, alert to
the forces that stream around us. To
must assume
has
figures depict-
ing the dramas of human existence, people flying, falling,
elements;
own
think of the patterns of air that circulate around a plane's
the ground. Blake
or
feel sub-
difficulties.
[
7
]
we
with the
moving energies
aid, give us
lift,
no mat-
David
W
h
y
e
t
and Moon should doubt,
If the Sun
They'd immediately go out.
Blake said, sure of the brilliant and reflective nature of
Not that any work and
life is
free
the places
from doubt,
especially
we work. Many's
mirror in the course of a long work shaded and eclipsed by striving.
We
complete
a
The eyes dimmed, the
we
gaze into the
own
and see our
loss of
faces
connection with our
professional smile false and forced.
make
pick up the phone and
when it comes to our
the time life
faith.
the
call,
though we have nothing
to say.
Whatever doubt we have, Blake conversation with grander, ourselves.
Underneath the
more
face,
asks us to put that
eternal,
more
doubt
in
essential parts of
underneath the surface profession-
alism, underneath the brief obituary in the paper, there are forces
grander than any individual these forces life
we
can
is
human
life at play.
To lose contact with
to lose a real sense of living, and especially of living a
call
our own. Suicide,
literal
of conversation with these forces.
Any
or metaphorical,
life,
hidden journey, a secret code, deciphered details only given truth
and any in
fits
life's
and
is
the loss
work,
starts.
is
a
The
by the whole, and the whole dependent on
the detail.
[
8
]
II
The Mountain Farm Stranger
A
Years ago, in
end of
at the far in
mv
the grate of
imminent
on
carlv twenties,
Cum mv
arrival.
Pennant,
friends'
at the
I
Door
mountainside
a
old tower in the tale aspect,
farmhouse, waiting
seemed, I
ing
mv
whole length of the
woods
in vain for their
I
I
had hurried past the
hill
lane and
a strange fairy-
emerged on the
could see the ancient farmhouse that always
at first sight, to I
valley.
me in the darken-
remote place
that gave this
then struck up the narrow
was cold, and
grow out of the mountain.
looked forward,
friends, to their
in that freezing
warm welcome
the farmhouse was dark and silent as
and the
hiss
but there was no answer to
door open and went
in.
walked through the
I
my knock.
The kitchen was empty,
[
9
)
wind, to join-
of a kettle. But
dav the house seemed to be waiting for someone in stillness,
a fire
had walked the long Welsh miles up the wet
I
Ahead of me,
ridge.
North Wales,
found mvself alone, lighting
road, in rain and cold wind, but no car had passed ing winter light the
in
I
gate.
That
its slate -gray
finally
pushed the
cold, and lightless,
David as if the walls
tions
W
h
y
e
t
were used to the coming and goings of whole genera-
and one day of human absence was nothing
was glad to be there, even alone. At
turies;
but
in the
midst of
I
storm.
this arriving
beginning to tear
Here, alone in the place
it
seemed
least
I
span of cen-
would be dry
as if the
my
coat and the rain.
farmhouse had taken on
the essential character of a timeless and sheltering roof.
here for centuries, immovable, and today
and indifferent to me,
it
It
had been
seemed both generous
a lone stranger waiting for his friends.
entered the living room, saw the empty grate in the
I
place,
wind now
listened to the
I
and shook off
at the trees,
in the
and looked out of the window onto
fire-
a familiar landscape: the
lowering valley shadowed by cloud, the cold, blue, snow-rimed
announcing the coming of a very wet and very Welsh win-
hills, all
ter night.
Beyond the mouth of the
surged ominously, its
lit
by the
valley the dark slate of the sea
final slants
of evening light flung across
surface.
Looking for I
couldn't help thinking, looking over the grand display of
mountain and tive for
Vision
a
sea, that
was looking
I
my coming work life.
suasion,
a
conversation
shelter of
journey. There were
my
needed, in Blake's words, a firm per-
I
with something larger than
personal hopes for a career.
from the
for an equally grand perspec-
I
was about to step out into the world
studies for
no jobs
my own
what seemed
available in
my
like a forbidding
chosen
field
of marine
zoology, and thousands of unemployed graduates at that time to
you
that your
dreams were to no
[
l
avail.
tell
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA In short,
was
I
in the difficult place
most of us
find ourselves
whether we are beginning biologists or bankers, aspiring academics or hopeful carpenters.
had
I
wanted to do
—which
was to
live in
some marvelously
oceans
—and
ing back,
I
at that
time, in
now
that
I
step in and of
stars to those
who
itself,
had
and
little
are
more than I could
far
we want
it is
silver,
to
do
life,
was losing anv
just prior to
images of a work and ping through
it.
of the
Look-
To
an enor-
moon, and
the
glimmer of what they
work must be
desire in
life,
I
wanted.
I
I
But
felt old,
the
how we
stepping out into the big world,
a life that
mv open
is
rest of the world.
myself and what
faith in
life
appreciate.
in life
gold, the
know what we
made, and how we belong to the
mv
really
to.
takes to
it
I
young existence,
should go about
of the kevs to any possible happiness in
self-knowledge
stage in
I
struggle for the merest
want or what they are suited
One
single,
of what
exotic place studying the
have even the least notion of what
mous
my
an even vaguer idea of how
realize
me
vague image inside
a
at this I
felt
I
precious
had nurtured since childhood
slip-
fingers.
Work, Work, Work Work identity,
is
difficulty
and drama,
our esteem, and our
a high-stakes
ability to
family
members
unhappy
in
the
at
in
which our
provide are mixed inside of
us in volatile, sometimes explosive ways.
outwardly calm day
game
We may have a difficult but
work, and then find ourselves bawling
moment we
our marriage but
find
get through the door.
l
We may be
our inchoate despair erupts only
with co-workers. "Sara had a meltdown,"
1
at
l
we
say,
describing our
David
W
y
h
supervisor's tirade, or "John finally lost day's confrontation.
we were
t
it,"
e
remembering
yester-
We describe dramas in the workplace as though
outlining alchemical reactions or intuiting the ability of
individuals to both find and then lose themselves in the midst of
seemingly hardheaded decisions.
Work
is
where we can make ourselves; work
break ourselves.
It is
a
never be measured by
moment,
making and an unmaking
money
build or ruin our
alone. In
where we can
that can ultimately
work we can indeed, and in a
fortunes, or
fiscal
is
we
can slowly and
imperceptibly, over long years, destroy the inner complexion of our character.
work
is
Sometimes to our
never done. At
der over the
last incline
grasp, to the very
the
is
its
best,
we
worst
only to see
bottom of the
same despairing At
its
despair,
we know
instinctively that
are Sisyphus, pushing the boulit fall
back and away, out of our
slope, to be
effort the following
pushed back up with
Monday morning.
work seems never-ending only because,
a pilgrimage, a journey in
like life,
it
which we progress not only through the
world but through stages of understanding. Good work, done well for the right reasons sign, in
most human
achievement societies.
is
and with an end
in
mind, has always been
traditions, of an inner
and outer maturity.
a
Its
celebrated as an individual triumph and a gift to our
A very hard- won arrival.
Seen in the
light of a pilgrim's journey,
greater significance than merely paying the
ever-present wolf from the door.
something yet to be
fully
work
bills
takes
on
a
and keeping the
With something
larger in mind,
imagined, something to be looked
for,
then the hazards and the hopes, the trepidation and the triumphs of
work are magnified and given import and meaning.
I
2
)
— CROSSING THE UNKNOWN" SEA very hard to say no to work.
It is
We mav courageously resign, more
take a sabbatical, or retire to a simpler,
then
we
are engaged in inner work, or
chopping wood.
There
Work means
almost no
is
life a
rustic existence, but
working on ourselves, or just
application, explication, expectation.
human being can
construct for themselves
where they
are not wrestling with something difficult, something
that takes a
modicum
human
ability ol
work
work
is
to the
The
work
that
makes
doing
stakes in
mav be
tence
is
is
at
The onlv
it
and to those affected bv
we
work
are
stake in ordinarv, unthinking
expression of ourselves,
our verv essence,
work mostlv
work
in
to just a job
from the
losses to be
To view work
above
and
is
Our compe-
work, but
we
because
more
terms of provision. I
have to do, then
endured
in putting
pilgrimage
as a
something bigger and
all,
we
it.
good
in
necessarilv put
we know,
in the
something more
are going to seek
the journev and find at
imagination.
it.
a
kind of living death. Little wonder
a
is
I
If
familiar approach, that I
can reduce
keep mvself
mv
safely
—
even smaller and better that awaits us in
giving
We
look around to see what
we
*
]
our work,
we
have for
possess only intuitions and
We look for courage and as vet find little of
'
away
told ourselves that
life
that
image
heart's desires at stake.
we have
better, or
bottom
mv
to put our hearts' desires to
hazard, because bv merelv setting out,
there
meaning
others and the world. Failure in trulv creative
often choose the less vulnerable,
places
of
gift to
it is
good
not some mechanical breakdown but the prospect of
is
failure in
we
our
simplest,
are necessarilv high.
our verv identities to hazard. Perhaps end,
its
sense, and that grants sense and
good work
a hearttelt
seems to be the
possibility
beings to choose good work. At
that
one who
of work.
it.
David
W
h
y
e
t
Finding the Courage to Begin
We say to ourselves that we need more than ordinary courage, but really there
we
no ordinary courage. Either we
is
are not. But the key
is
courage arises
from the old French
geous means
at
bottom
those steps which
we
increase our stride as tion
word
in the
courage itself.
meaning
cuer,
are courageous or
heart.
to be heartfelt. To begin with
The word
To be coura-
we
take only
can do in a heartfelt fashion and then slowly
we become
familiar with the direct connec-
between our passion and our courage. Without some kind of
fire at
the center of the conyersation, a sense of journey through
work,
life
pulling
becomes
just another strategic
first
tentatiye steps
brought to
life
embers
Once we haye taken
stakes.
toward worthwhile creatiye work, we haye inside us that
would
signal
inner death should they then go out In taking our .
an expression of our belonging,
sometimes our seemingly most is
more
bottom
way of
desire for something better in our
work, we haye immediately raised the
that
plan, a
wool oyer the eyes of reality while we get our own way.
Once we haye kindled our
the
game
we
fragile
some kind of
work
seriously as
hazard our most precious
hopes and dreams,
in a
world
often than not associated with a harsh and destructiye
line.
Alone
in that cottage, all those years ago,
I
had begun to shiyer
not only with the cold of a Welsh mountain winter, but with an awful sense that
I
was suddenly about to play by
different rules. That
the inner light of youthful imaginings might be smothered by hardbitten adult notions of work, inherited generation after generation.
There are deep wells of loss, bitterness and exploitation when
[
i
4
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA it
comes
human
to our
history around work.
I
realized that these
wells could erupt and flood over any youthful individual hopes,
whatever age
drown them. The world of work
was, and
I
was
I
about to confront was a mighty inherited sea of hard- won experience, and its
was
I
just a small vessel coasting for the
moment among
inshore inlets and bavs.
A Stranger at the
I
set to lighting the fire, carefully nestling the coals
burning kindling and had
knock
Door
at
just finally
brought
the old weather-beaten door.
stranger to the house, drenched by the looking, as
I
was, for
evening slipped
by,
overcoming our tion: tell
friends.
I
first
opened
life it
when heard a I
to find another
same walk up the
invited
him
to the
fire,
valley
and
and
as the
wariness, and the strangeness of the situa-
unknown home, beginning
quantities in an
as strangers do, a little
of our
ered a lot of ground very quickly, but as the
to
the
and he began to drv out, we found ourselves
initial
two unknown
each other,
my
I
it
among
I
life stories.
was soon to
We
to
cov-
find out, in
round of conversation, he held back from the central
drama.
As we moved on from our brief introductions, our conversation roved over the particular atmosphere and character of the
wooded
valley of
Cwm
Pennant directly below our window.
both loved the mountains and valleys of Snowdonia, and to talk with
I
someone who shared the same enthusiasm
rugged corner of Wales, but
his
was glad for this
was no ordinary appreciation.
l
$
1
We
I
was
W
h
struck by his detailed knowledge of woodlands, trees, and animals.
Not only his knowledge but his
storyteller's ability to articulate
reframe the natural world around us so that I began to glimpse
words
in his
biology,
I
as if for the first time.
found
again with
new
eyes.
man, both
I
my own hard
again
it
studies in
was beginning to see I
in his
it all
began to
feel that this
work and
his
way with
He was both a landscape gardener and a self-taught expert in work
the study of woodlands. His
under
that
As the hours passed,
stranger was a very singular
words.
him
in listening to
Despite
and
also
He managed planting projects
it.
had some
all
literal
ground
over England and Wales.
Asking the Question It is
always a privilege to see in one person, knowledge, imag-
ination and articulation combined, and a double privilege to be in
conversation alone with that synergy of talents.
warm
to him, and
brandy
I
couldn't help but
couldn't help but open the small bottle of
I
had brought to share with
would never
I
As
arrive that night.
my friends.
I
I
opened the
was sure now they bottle,
I
asked him
how he had come to all this knowledge, and more to the point of my curiosity,
him,
telling
stopped steps.
how had he come
I
as
I
him
do the work he loved? I found myself
would not have
at a crossroads,
told
to
I
told
many
closer to
me,
that
looking for direction, unsure of
was beginning to
feel a
few
my
I
felt
next
icy tendrils of cyni-
cism around what work might actually mean to most of the adult world, and with a long
what into
it
took to find a
which you could
work life
life
and
really
a
ahead of me,
still
work such
as
I
wanted to know
he had found,
put your heart and soul.
1
6
)
a
work
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA "So,
what took you into
this?"
all
pouring and holding up to him in the
He took
deep breath, and
a
correctly, a swift,
"Do you Did said that
really
we had
looked
I
at
North Wales faded quickly
flat
with those kind of people
was
I
a
looked
worried what
was worth die
telling of the tale.
was
at
this
way
I
the end of
I
in his first
I
itself,
my
would
brandy.
how
me, and because of
"That brandy,"
I
"Thank you," he can take
this
brought
me
said.
little faith
"Perhaps
we
I
the
said. "Liying in a
who
got to that point,
I
I
was one of
He looked me I
was looking to see
I
felt
that
had
I
in
could see if
I
sat
on
in
my
life
and
it all. I
open twelfth-floor window
it all.
us.
in,
couldn't trust and
think, he
had made a complete mess of
I
words.
tether and ready to end
everything in turn, including the
this that
at the
to terms with the sheer bloody awfulness of my
thing had abandoned
I
remember
said,
know ledge registered with me.
that scuffed floor, looking at the
coming
I
was now approaching mid-
druggie, a dodo, a complete addict."
that he wasn't
worry,
it
I
kind of place, but
in that
how
the
him,
with people
the eye to see
"I
if
quickly in agreement and started straight
couldn't trust me. That's a story in
flat,
same time,
our mutual friends coming back to disturb
dingy North London
them.
the
was entirely and utterly desperate," he
"I
could,
want to know?"
night, little chance of
beauties of
I
firelight, a half-filled glass.
plenty of time and as
He nodded back
said as innocently as
warming draught of the brandy, and
want to know?
I
at
I
sure that every-
had abandoned
in myself.
"
shouldn't?"
said,
with an airy wave of his hand, "and don't
now
or leave
it; it
was much harder
to the point of wanting to
window."
[
/
7]
stuff than
jump out of
that
David He paused seemed
walls
W
j
h
and the wind
for effect,
e
t
now howling
outside the
to emphasize the silence he had created in the
room.
"Jump?" "Jump.
I
of going through with
it. I
wanted to jump. enough
to the ground, at least high
weak.
unkempt flower box
"Not for the want of it.
properly.
I've
mud
wasn't
much
a
cramp
trying.
do the
a
bloody long way
job, but
in
of
a
mv
leg.
I
falling
come
I
so high,
laughing matter then.
was too
I
I
it. I still
couldn't even I
kill
ended up with
can't
mvself
mv chin
have to laugh now, but
Mv
it
sweater was caught on a
over the inside of the box, and
I
had
ended up sprawled across the wooden trough
on me,
mv
I
suppose
they had; the great thing was,
I
dirt, the tears
running
must have looked
a sight,
hands in the
face in absolute frustration.
but nobodv saw me.
me
couldn't get over
never been so humiliated.
knees wouldn't
down mv
at that
I
time
just gave up.
back through that window,
lav there for the longest time,
the
I
and knees under the box.
with the rain
ing for
was
it."
The edges of the box were
in the
mv
It
whole length of the window."
across the
"You obviously didn't do
nail,
to
ledge with every intent
barely fed myself at the time, and there was this huge
I
get over
window
got myself onto the
I
wouldn't have cared
There was nothing wait-
in that
mv arms
if
awful room, so
out and
mv
face
I
just
down
in
mud."
A Turn of the Tide "Facedown vears.
I
in the
mud, something happened
think that there are
I
hadn't
felt for
some experiences you can only crawl
[18]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA into
on your hands and knees once told
chiatrist
of
me
many happening
that suicide
all at
the will to do
is
you need to be alone; and
all
which,
had
my
lost
go and
make
despair.
And suddenly
I
I
felt
was
at least
It
:
I
as
felt
it.
if
I
everything was in
it's
had
literally
opened
kill
proper place.
window and
a
I
hadn't
seemed
to be waiting for you.
you
just
had to
listen
hard to hear
felt like that for years. First
it.
I
felt since
As
if
good cry
those years to hear his
for that
name being
I
was
was weeping with
fellah inside
called.
[19]
at
and you alone, and
Well, there
young
I
there
again.
Oh,
I
frustration,
was weeping because there was nowhere I needed to a
I
taken
You know, when you could look out of your window
a special kind of imitation waiting for you,
was having
I
time to move
you have to
its
was
I
home
came over me, sudden,
breath of freedom and entered a stillness
and then
at
didn't feel
I
halfway out of the
know You get stuck and
the street and everything
hadn't
down
incredibly peaceful
the simple mistake of thinking
couldn't quite believe
a child.
looking
it.
"Suddenly
was
when you think about
edge of that muddy box. There was
cliff
That's suicide, you
yourself to do
in despair the sec-
my weapon;
those necessary conditions,
rise to
on, but you
you need
you need the opportunity.
last,
hated, halfway toward something better.
a little
First of all,
the passion for ending myself had receded
spread-eagled on the
nowhere
I
lost
I
When
alone anymore.
along with
it,
and
fifth
box,
in that planting
the soil in that box,
like.
it.
combination. Third, you need the weapon; fourth,
a strange
Stuck
psy-
of the conditions have to be
all
and yet strangely enough, while you are
ond thing you need it, is
once, and
A
not one event but a confluence
is
go through with
right for the person to despair,
order to understand them.
in
go.
me, waiting
I
all
David "It
that the rain
carved a
Sometime
banks with
and
On the banks
me.
my
nose, a
Montana
little
of the tiny river, in the
I
my
at that
moment,
so
I
took
a
I
lift
form
started to
some
little
in
brown
edge.
It
good long look
began to mold the muddy earth into hands.
its
my new-
next hour or so of lying there in
in the
began to
I
to
down and noticed
looked
I
wanted
I
there were green plants and shoots growing along
found peace,
river,
e
t
whole length of the window. There
world right beneath
was the only world I had it.
suppose.
I
river valley the
little
that scene beneath
at
y
had been running into one end of the flower box and
a miniature
mud,
h
had been raining nonstop for days, part of why
chuck myself out the window,
was
W
little hills
and
side branches of the
plants out carefully and put
them
in
different places. "I
my
must have
lain there,
wet through, working the ground with
hands, for a very long time, but for the
time
had
I
something looked
at
glimmer, just
a I
could
me
and
in that
my
hands on.
hour
had given
I
felt as if
I
back an old memory,
God had
had looked back
that I'm formally religious or anything, but
me
could do,
I
in the rain, in that tiny little
world, halfway out of a twelfth-floor window,
Him. Not
time in a very long
glimmer, of something
a
literally get
again,
first
at
something
a sense of creation, a
way back
into the world. "I
had
my hands
small scale the vsay
I
in the soil
and
do now on
damn it. I was working the ground here.
I
straight out.
I
a
fixed
was molding the ground on
a larger scale.
of my future
went back through the window,
without thinking and with
went
I
into that
determination
my
I
I
was landscaping,
life.
flat;
hadn't
a
That's I
how
I
got
washed myself
felt for
months;
I
eyes right on the ground, walked
[2 0]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA straight past
my
He wouldn't
the door of a friend.
was
good friend and he helped
a
came out later
on the corner and knocked loudly on
local dealer
at the
moved
I
believed me.
other end
He
to Wales. It
was the
believe
me
believed
other
life
now and
but the one
I
again;
own ground
just have to find out
me
—
have
I
staring at
he leaned forward, looked have our
me
then, and I'd
done
no, no need for
mv work
and
I
seems. Look
what
/
in years. I've
now, just a
it
cliff
and
down
said,
you know. You have yours,
know what?
It is
"We
too.
right
over that edge. a bit
It's
all
You
on the
edge of life. That's the edge you go
something vou can step out onto. I
year
him with my mouth open, because
But you
it is.
with but then vou'll recognize
when
I
don't want any
Put yourself in conversation with that edge no matter it
A
more important,
directlv in the eye,
to work,
edge of vourself. At the
ing
When
into detox.
have."
must have been
I
me
courageous thing
never touched the hard stuff again glass like this
check
epiphany but he
little
enrolled in a landscape course.
I
first
my
to.
how frighten-
a bit terrifying to
begin
of territory that you can work,
It
was there
all
the time for
me,
look back, just on the other side of a too, too familiar win-
dow, out of which
I
had not been looking."
Looking Out to Sea Our mutual night,
and we were
friends never appeared at the farmhouse that left
bottle of brandy until
the
with each other and the remnants of the half
we
fell
asleep in opposing armchairs, just as
moon was beginning to show
itself after
[2 1]
the storm.
I
remember
David
W
h
y
e
t
the conversation as a kind of gifted revelation, as
if in
that listening
had been rejoined with familiar but forgotten voices essential to
own life and work. I had listened in that flower
In the
wee hours of
stranger's story
by the
that night,
began to work the
I
my own
the territory of
clay of
beyond
felt as if
fire,
on
had
a rainy
my own
and the conversation that followed,
my
lain
life
Welsh
again, to
I
found myself
history and felt newly
for the waiting future that might
lie
ahead of
me
that winter night.
By dawn,
was
I
staring out over the far sea, involved in a
strange inversion of the stranger's experience, for
new ground and
the vast sea was reaching into
tory and molding and shaping a future
morning,
I
life.
my
I
felt as if /
as if
was
contained terri-
All the hours of the early
looked out, feeling a kind of magnetism to that
windswept ocean,
draw
I
belonging. In the intimacy of the
beginning to articulate and reshape
emboldened
I
my
box along with him.
mountainside,
mold
so intently that
I
aware of the forces in
my
future that
far
would
me into my work, whatever form it would take, over the hori-
zons and
unknown
seas to the west.
Memory and Magic Looking back to that mountain farmhouse
in the early
from our present brave new technological world,
am
I
1
970s
feel as if
I
gazing on a primary, almost mythological layer of experience.
The encounter
in the
farmhouse seems storybook, other-worldly,
outlined and dramatized by
memory and
2 2
the pivotal nature of
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA the encounter.
Work
much on
centers so
technology today, and
the imagination mediated through technology, that forget that the
Dow
ware and the shareware are individual
was any
human
NASDAQ,
Jones, the
meant
all
soul's desire to
now. Quite the opposite. youthful aspiration in
I
am
the hardware, the soft-
to be
good servants to the
in the early seventies than
gazing,
mv own
easy to
is
belong to the world. Not that
good work
easier to find
it
I
history,
it
it is
suppose, into a period of
when my
desires and
my
needs of the world were more touchable and urgent. But the more look back into those youthful energies, the they are needed in
need,
at
all
more
certain
the stages of pilgrimage in a
am
that
life.
We
I
work
I
every stage in our journey through work, to be in conversa-
tion with our desire for
something suited to us and our individual
natures.
To
mv mind, one
the discipline of
of the great disciplines of any
memory, of remembering what
midst of our business and busyness. The finds
courage from the
almost as
if,
difficult intimacies
afraid of those
sciously created a
human
is
human
life is
essential in the
soul thrives
on and
of belonging. But
it is
primary intimacies, we have uncon-
work world
so secondary, so complex, and so
busy and bullied bv surface forces that embroiled in those surface difficulties,
more
we
have the perfect busy excuse not to wrestle with the
essential difficulties of existence, the difficulties of finding a
work and
a life suited to
would lead us
our individual natures; the
to an older, intimate, and
belonging. In the farmhouse
all
difficulties that
more human
those years ago,
I
sense of
stumbled into
conversational intimacy with a stranger and felt the whole course of
my life pivot in
the encounter.
[
2
3]
David
W
y
h
t
e
A Midnight Conversation In writing Crossing the
Unknown
Sea,
create that special and privileged intimacv
den encounter between exactly the
strangers.
moment when
greater perspective.
A
I
have attempted to re-
which occurs
time
when
in the sud-
paths cross at
both writer and reader are ready for
A moment when both might be
readv to
know
something of the territory through which they have passed and
unknown future which might
glimpse of the
Unknown Sea
Crossing the
midnight conversation, ability to
static
look
at
reimagine ourselves;
notions of what itions of
a
is
what
work means
lies
endpoint or
meant
mere
a
ahead.
to be an exploration and a
our present vision of work and our voyage into both our inherited
a sea
to us and our experiences and intu-
over the horizon a
lie
a
.
A
reminder that work
is
not
a
exercise in providing, but a journev and a
pilgrimage in which the core elements of our being are tested in the world.
Whether
it
be the Berlin Wall, apartheid, the bad old coercive
Soviet system, or our
own bad
seems that any foundations not relationship are being swept
old coercive business systems,
now
built
on the
realities
of human
away by the forces of our time.
same way, our notions of work
are undergoing an
it
In the
enormous
sea
change, and because of that, our workplaces are themselves being
worked on, molded and often scoured away by the same enormous tidal forces.
We
are
moving from
a familial, parent- child relation-
ship in the workplace to an adult-adult relationship with our organizations, entails.
with
all
of the shock,
Unknown
hands and
difficulties,
triumphs, and fears that
as yet barely articulated tidal forces,
[2 4]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA molding and scouring not only the ground on which we stand
are
but the verv shape of our identities.
Unknonn Sea hopes not only to chart the journey
Crossing the
work
into
and our present sense of power and powerlessness,
itself
but to offer something of a journey, an arrival, and, a little insight
good
storytelling
tion. This life
through
book
and work.
reader's
own
is
is
memories, and
its
we
are lucky,
its stories.
an imitation to an imaginatiye conversation about
In the attentiye ear of the reader
is
the echo of the
story, joined inyisibly to the conversation.
the clay and
every day bv what
met
I
that night
ground of our
lives
on the mountainside, we
and the territory of our work
we do and how we do it. At times, many of us find
ourselves hovering oyer precipitous heights, wondering
should end ically,
take,
it all
—
my
literally, like
work
in
Work,
its
seeming entrapment.
one form or another awaits
and probably, bv after all, at
its
its
best,
if
we
mysterious friend, or metaphor-
by leaving our present work and
matter,
All
reshaped by the listening and attentiye imagina-
Like the stranger
mold
poetry,
its
if
us,
whatever step
No we
everlasting presence, even after death. is
one of the great human gateways to the
eternal and the timeless. In
work we
are constantly attempting to
and reimagine ourselves
at the
same time.
our world every dav bv the way
we
cubicle, or across the carpenter's
are
remember
ourselves
We change ourselves and
on the phone,
workbench.
in the office
We may
find
our
sense of belonging through investing millions in a millisecond in a
myriad of countries, or more slowly by investing our time tered city office working with the local dispossessed.
in a clut-
Wherever we
work, we need courage both to remember what we are about and,
[
2 5
]
W
h
according to the tenor of our times, reimagine ourselves while are doing all
those
speak
or,
it.
We are not alone in this endeavor but secretly joined to
who
where we have not yet begun
struggle out loud
when
publicly,
we
are loud and vociferous, to those
We
labor painfully and secretly beside us.
those
we
to
who
are joined especially to
who have come before us.
We are immensely privileged even to inquire about the meaning of our work.
would
Many
Many
for a lover,
of our ancestors pined for good
work as they
and remained unrequited and stricken by want.
of our ancestors died while working in dangerous or desper-
ate conditions.
Some
few, a very few, left
left
good work and found none
little,
to replace
it.
A
crossed oceans, and found abundance
beyond hope. Others worked hard or traveled to new shores and dutifully sacrificed for their sons
and daughters, while their hearts
and minds were elsewhere, their innermost selves tide.
left
come from,
unfulfilled, their
high and dry, disappointed by time's fleeting
Whatever our inheritance of work
apex of innumerable
lives
in this
life,
of endeavor and sacrifice.
we
are only the
Where we
and hardships are immensely important.
This book
is
meant
to breathe
own memory and our own
upon and
courage. In
ignite the
it, I
embers of
hope to bring the
powers of the imagination to bear on our present vexing, questions about
work and
the greater story of which
meant
to get
and the
who
to call
we
upon
a deep, shared
constantly forget
we
and begin an
invisible conversation
have gone before us and those It is,
for the
most
[
who
will inherit
memory
of
It is
Dow Jones
with
all
those
what we make
part, a personal story,
2 6
strategic
are a part.
below our present preoccupation with the
NASDAQ
of ourselves.
have
the struggles of our parents, our ancestral countries,
their voyages,
our
own dreams
and
as
I
have
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA much
spent
of my
life
wrestling with unknowns,
dedication to that unknown.
unknown we must way
to call
wrote
new
this
Our
for
all
life
and our work,
the
unknowns
book based on my perception
century,
we
meant
to be a
great hope, in wrestling with that
learn to call our
on our courage
it is
is
to find a
yet to come.
I
that at the threshold of our
are attempting to gather whatever courage
we
have dormant in our hearts, individually and collectively, for a great
journey across
a difficult
and unknown
[2 7]
sea.
Mid Ocean
Ill
At the Cliff Edge of Life From Powerlessness to Participation
I
awoke
to a different rhythm, a recognizably
catch of the boat's
movement. As
subliminal terror.
I
the
at
a
freeze. I
1
mercy of
the waves, under
loom of
My
my
eyes,
looked across and saw our
first
mv bunk and
\
ie\\
was of
mv
wall.
no human control.
I
felt
my
I
blood to
new replacement captain asleep.
anchorage, two good sea miles
choppy water between us and
it. I
shoulder and swore out loud; the lava
cliff
tip
of the mast swaying just feet from the
Beneath
it,
the waves were sounding off the
rock and throwing spray over the boat. Even
was beginning to turn sideways on, the mast ing roof of the
was moving
the land very near to us, and
last night's
shadowed everything, the outward curving
sudden
ran in a frenzy up the ladder to the cock-
to the stern and a vast gulf of
looked quickly over
felt a
I
that the boat
deep, muffled, booming sound which set
leapt out of
pit.
opened
knew immediately
instinctively the spectral
heard
I
changed sway and
cliff.
[31]
I
looked, the boat
rising
toward the curv-
as
W A moment toward the rock. line
and saw
we were
later
again, the
lay
bow
moment
A
quick twist of the
solidity,
and
seemed
to freeze forever
I
flattened the lever
retreated from the
then a
reared toward that implacable
bow
rail
fell off,
and
back into reverse. The
its rise,
then
it
dropped,
the stern shot suddenly backwards, the
cliff;
cliff receded,
on
life;
of unspeakable fear beneath the
bow
the
cliff as
lifting
of the trailing anchor
of the button, and the engine coughed into
unholy roof of the
the world returned swiftly to sanity again, and
bounded from below.
A mere
eighteen months had passed since
the stranger high on a
morning
that gray
my
Welsh mountain and already
side of the world, farther than
me
on
looked madly for the
I
mist of diesel fumes, a
the captain
front
mercifully free of the propeller.
it
oil key, a stab
deathly
h
as
determination forged by
I
my
encounter with I
was on the
imagination could have carried
had looked out over the
my
far
Irish Sea.
encounter with the stranger
farmhouse seemed to have shifted the wind round
in
The
in the
my favor, and
I
had graduated, weathered the gloomy job prospects, and, with good fortune favoring the newly brave, landed myself a uralist
as a nat-
guide in the Galapagos islands.
was
I
right
bang on the equator,
and working aboard the Bronzewing,
foot sloop that had
Ocean, 700
in the Pacific
miles from the South American coast, in the living
plum job
a
Mecca of
handsome
biologists,
forty- eight-
become my very movable home. Galapagos was
everything a naturalist might dream
of:
exotic one-of-a-kind species
above and below water, and the lingering glamour of Darwin's brief passage
still
shimmering
going. Like the
excitement,
I
in the air despite the
140 years since
young Darwin who had arrived here
felt
I
had
my work
now, and
[3 2]
my
his
electric with
direction; but
no
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA work or
career can be a steady, laid- out progression. All in this gar-
den was not completely the
iar to
human
rosy,
and
it
was
certainly
no paradise
famil-
eye.
The Shock of the Real Though Not
shock.
I
had
a
dream
job,
I
was suffering
kind of culture
a
the shock of encountering an unfamiliar
human
culture
but the profound, shattering impact of looking nature straight in the face.
had encountered
I
human
include the
Galapagos a culture that did not seem to
in
at all.
For most of
have remained undiscovered, and
we
pagos. As a species,
was young, too,
just in
the loneliness of this I
mv
went, than
I
saw animals
I
I
found myself prone to
of ocean rocks and strange animals.
in all its glory, yet a secret
raw form intensely
living
mv human mind
are but recent visitors to Gala-
early twenties.
new world
in its
history, these islands
are voungsters in this very old world, and
had come to studv nature
found Galapagos
we
human
frightening.
portion of me
Everywhere
I
and dying according to some other mercy
could stand.
It all
seemed
to paint a world in
which there was no immunity or hiding place for anything from the great cycles of life and death. This incident beneath the lava
everything
I
had been anticipating for months in
Though we ing to our fear of I
human
what we
profess to love nature, desires.
We
I
like
was
my secret fears. it
packaged accord-
do not look too hard
will find there.
was no exception.
we
cliff
at the
world for
On the threshold of this new world,
found Galapagos intensely disturbing. The
natural world unmediated by society
mental idea but a raw force
in
is
no picturesque, environ-
which human beings often seem to
3 3
W on
participate
sufferance.
Young
as
I
h
}
was
in Galapagos,
I
began to
touch an exposed nerve in human experience: the sense that there is
something larger
ever
work
I
in the
world than mere human
was doing, something
different order of priorities
encompassed
was moving
grander and more
a
more
larger,
priorities.
frightening, with a
Something
in parallel.
difficult
What-
universe than
my
that
career
goals.
Nature, Fortune, and Fear There
is
a
long connection between the way
of the natural world and the against the wilder, individually,
and rightly
so.
we
say
stand in fear
way we have used work
nonhuman
whatever
we
as a bastion
forces of existence. Societally and
on the
surface,
Humans work hard and
we are
afraid of nature,
build imaginatively, genera-
tion after generation. Then, as Camille Paglia says, "Let nature
shrug, and rential
tremor
all is
in ruin ."Venezuelan shorelines disintegrate in tor-
downpours. Industrious Kobe's concrete overpasses as if
pushed by
a petulant child,
hear the news and ignore
human imagination is
stirred.
ing "Get a safe job." As
if,
it
"Get
all,
warming
fear
also,
says,
mean-
over the years they have learned the
wicked, veering manner of the winds that blow through unmerciful ways; but
seas.
but underneath, some old
good job," a parent
a
in a
and even now, vast shelves
of Antarctic ice threaten to float off and melt in our
We
fall
life in
their
they are passing on, parent to child, a
bred into our human bones of that dark outer wind's howling,
pushing presence. The same wind that howled outside the farm-
house that night
in Wales.
The same winds
3 4
)
that
blew us onto the
lava
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA cliff
from our anchorage. Work provides
other ways than safety
safety.
To define work
in
to risk our illusions of immunity in the one
is
organized area of life where
we seem
to keep nature and the world
at bav.
The Edge of Necessity In
work,
it
has always taken courage to follow a unique and
making our own path takes us
individual path exactly, because
the path, in directions which
seem profoundly
into the night and the night wind.
must
make
travel to
we could first ing part
it
tion.
It
is
always
more
difficult
possibility of
and then find yourself suddenly under the
work
to
heartfelt participa-
connects us to larger, fiercer worlds where
remember
literally
first priorities.
we
The farm laborer knows
puts bread on the table.
The
police officer
been
dinner conversation with a water
in the
his
the
are forced
the toil that
I
firsthand
remember
executive
who had
midst of a massive Turkish earthquake. Awake night after
night, doing
he and
utility
lies in
knows
the invisible line between order and disorder in society. a recent
cliff,
which we can dedicate ourselves always
some kind of courage, some form of
it
than
The amus-
takes us to the cliff edges of life.
needs courage because the intrinsic worth of work
fact that
to
which we
territory through
from another, equally terrifying direction.
Finding a calls for
it
A pilgrimage
unsafe.
you can spend years preparing for the
falling off the cliff
approaching
a life for ourselves
imagine;
that
is
The
off
work
that
was not part of his
official
job description,
team brought water, medicines, and supplies to
panicking communities.
Once
the crisis was past, he
[
3 S
]
bereft,
wondered if he
David would ever
feel that aliveness
W
y
h
t
e
and urgency again the
rest of his days.
He was
wistful for the frontier encounter, the cliff edge. This cliff
edge
a frontier
is
where
need
passion, belonging, and
call for
our
presence, our powers, and our absolute commitment.
To approach work
in this
manner
is
not merely to look for
constant excitement but to join a conversation with the great cycles
of existence, cycles that often terrify us even as they
of us.
I
now
fallen
and achingly vulnerable: the former
wandering the hospital corridors
calling,
on the best
think of my sisters, hospital nurses, intimately familiar with
the once great,
CEO
call
"John
.
.
.
John
his legs after the car
.
.
in a
dreamlike dementia,
John"; the track athlete slowly moving
.
smash, his triumph
est increase in their arc of movement. It
now is
confined to the slight-
astonishing
how much of
our everyday work has powerful life-or-death consequences: the firefighter trical
on the
fragile roof, the
policeman on the
street, the elec-
engineer bringing power back to a darkened neighborhood.
The teacher curses
way
his
to school and then says exactly the right
thing at the right time to the vulnerable, listening adolescent. All
good work should have an edge of life and death ately apparent, then to
to
we drown in numbness.
In Galapagos,
the presence of that
every day and night the
felt
—
not immedi-
be found by ardently exploring
context. Absent the edge, I
it, if
particularly in the night,
reef-strewn islands without beacons,
cliff
its
edge, almost
when we
lights,
greater
navigated
or electronic
we had was
the faint illumination of a compass and
dead reckoning. Meanwhile,
my own inner compass was pointing in
instruments. All
a direction
I
didn't
ceptualization,
I
want to
go. After years of distant biological con-
was being given
3 6
a personal introduction to the
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA 800-pound
nature seemed to get.
world
could muster to face
it
wanted, in the end,
The enormous power and reach of the
Galapagos stirred
in
Whatever
gorilla called nature.
life
me
in a
natural
to search for whatever courage
way
that
was not based
I
root on
at its
dread.
The
closest
I
had come to
this
raw power
had been the fierce moorland winds of
mv
in
mv own growing
native Yorkshire.
looked into the wave forms cresting past the boat
at night,
I
As
I
remem-
bered the North Country fogs, the winter blizzards, the unending bogs.
My mind
moss and
peat.
woman who
roved back over the austere beautv of those seas of I
couldn't help but think of an equallv fierce voung
lived
on the shoreline of those moors.
So coward soul So
is
mine,
trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see
Heaven
Andfaith
s glories shine,
shines equal,
arming mefrom fear.
That was Emilv Bronte, author of Withering Heights,
own
cliff
edge, in defiance of
all
at
her
the fearful dangers standing
between her and her work. She had to
find a
way
across a very
storm -troubled sphere. She spoke not onlv of the tearing elemental nature of that North Country wind but also of the forces she fought against in her
own
visible to herself
into
and
a
woman;
a
woman very
but barely visible to the masculine Victorian world
which she was born. What was the
fear? Fear of the it
lifetime as a writer
wind and
faith that
armed her from
fear of societal displeasure?
was some kind of intimate conversation
[
3
7
that
To
my mind,
Emily was able to
David sustain, along
with her
W
j
h
e
t
more
Charlotte and Anne, with the
sisters,
frightening, often hidden forces of life.
Emily Bronte lived age. She
their
and her
mother
as
sisters,
at the cliff
edge of
from
life
a
very early
along with their brother, Bran well, lost
young children. Her
though present
father,
house, lived mostly in his study and his church and
left
them
in the
to par-
ent themselves. There were no real adult voices advising imaginative caution.
For most of us, an inner parental voice continuallv
keeps the world
know how
at bay. It says, "Life is
precarious; vou young cannot
sum
precarious. Don't add to the
total of difficulty that
awaits you: Stay off the moors: Stay off the ocean, stay away
the edge, don't follow the intensity of your find safe
you life
more
work, and adventure not into vour
directly into nature itself.
and not
in the
from
passionate dreams,
own
nature
lest
it
lead
Adventure only on the weekends of
working week."
These wary voices are deep inside
on the edge of a decision or
as a
the office every day, even as
us,
whispering into our ears
background chorus
we grow
into our
as
we walk into
own middle
age.
Despite the lineaments of our streamlined organizations, the flow charts and the carefully calculated retirement,
more
when we
neglect this
forceful conversation with the edges of existence, a great part
of us feels entirely subject to the mercies of the windblown world that has
now become
a stranger to us.
The Edge of the Unknown Stories of near disaster
on dangerous shores are not so
far,
then, from the dynamics that underlie a normal workday. Without
[3 8]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA the presence of an edge in our lives,
toward keeping chaos grating the differing
much
of our
work
at bay, staving off financial disaster,
is
bent
or inte-
wave forms of dozens of unpredictable people
in a given organization. In the
midst of it
all, like
to be noticed above the surrounding din,
noisy drumroll of results.
Wave
we
against wave,
a child
determined
have to keep up the
work
is
an uncharted
sea.
Any
difficult conversation,
feel,
may
lead to a possible shipwreck. Yet increasinglv now, despite
our wish for
safety, there
anv sudden change of career,
we
is
less that
resembles a steady career or
a straight career path. This
moment
of reckoning under the lava
many dangerous
cliff
speaks to the
the
way we must continuallv forge our
arrivals in a life of
identities
work and
to
through our
endeavors.
A Necessary Simplicity Whether if
we
it
is
are serious about our
ticed to something calls
a place like
much
Galapagos or a place
work we tend
larger than
we
like
our
office,
to find ourselves appren-
expected, something that
on more of our essence than we previously imagined, some-
thing seemingly
lawyer glimpses,
needed
raw late
and overpowering. The voung, exhausted
one evening, the enormous commitment
for her future partnership; the apprentice violin
maker can
only marvel at the older man's simultaneous ease and absolute precision with the tinv
always
call
wood
plane. Seeminglv
superhuman forces
on individual human beings to simplify themselves.
A
kind of simplification, achieved day by day, hour by hour, in our given work, right into the essence of what needs to be done. That
[39]
David
W
simplified essence can terrify us, as
simplified essence cated, using the
is
j
h
found
I
not to be found so
metaphor of the
t
e
in Galapagos.
And
that
easily, as T. S. Eliot indi-
sea so brilliantly.
It
seems to be
hidden, between the waves themsebes, because indeed, newly arriyed at the edge,
we
haye not yet deyeloped the faculties that will
allow us to see the pattern in
full.
Not known, because not lookedfor But heard, half heard, in the Between two waves of the
sea.
Quick now, here, now, always
A
stillness
—
condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not
less
than everything)
—T
.
S
.
.
.
Eliot
.
"Four Quartets"
Our drama aboard
the Bronzewing, adrift beneath the laya
cliff,
almost cost us everything, but our collectiye response to the near disaster
was anything but simple.
of the captain as he to
me.
first
for the world.
face,
He
aware of my part
secretly hold
to unrayel
him
it
was
in
drama and
bottom of
smug and
never forget the pale distress
said.
Under
cliff
the stricken white
could see the sense of guilt plainly written
didn't see
in the
the disaster at the afford to be
I
will
appeared and looked quickly from the
In an instant, everything
parchment of his
I
a
mine because I
had hidden
chasm yet
artificially
I
was not yet
my
fully
contribution to
to be explored.
I
could
generous on the surface though
to blame, even while
from within.
[40]
my smugness
slowly began
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA Looking Into the Abyss My lect
—
first
reaction was the easy one.
He had
the
I,
mere
drift.
naturalist
saw
I
mv
fellow crew
than this
new
member
captain, and
on board, had discovered our
Carlos, really
we were
definitely
from which we had
particular anchorage
as
his painful humiliation too,
my own
But there was a rising disquiet beginning to beat in
and
—
through not only the anchor dragging but
slept
our long, long, nighttime because
could see only his neg-
almost criminal neglect, to our seagoing minds
his
captain.
I
knew our more
drifted.
plight.
chest.
I
boat better
familiar with the
We
should have
persisted in our shared opinion the previous night about our need to put out a second anchor line.
anchor without consultation,
as
We
crews are wont to do when they do
not want to argue with their captain.
No captain
is
should have dropped another
We
should have
the be-all and end-all of
apportioning blame.
all
responsibility,
If
we had merely touched
tow and the huge waves
that
said;
shadow of the
as quickly.
cliff,
knew
no place
cliff,
alike.
for
we would
The under-
all.
all instantly,
we
and disappeared just
We motored away, back toward the anchorage, the sleephow
sudden, shocked and verv violent end.
on the breakfast. Nothing could be
The
con-
Carlos had appeared in the cockpit as
ing passengers blissfullv unaware of
said.
is
all
lacerating against that undercut, barnacle-
encrusted fortress would have killed us
Nothing was
we had
The edge
have been for the briny deep, crew and passengers
the
too.
matter that the inherited world of the sea told us that the
tributed to the lapse, the inexcusable lapse.
left
woken
near-disaster
I
said
close they had
been to
could hear Carlos starting
—
there was nothing to be
seemed beyond any post-mortem, but
[
4
1
a
my
David mind swung back and
W
h
y
e
t
There was nothing
forth, unable to rest.
criminal in dragging our single line;
we had gone
to sleep in a
flat
calm, with the wind coming up suddenly in the night. Rabida Island has a notorious, difficult, sloping beach, unable to hold an anchor in
any kind of blow.
was the
It
captain's sleeping through
More
secretly Carlos
slept on, too, but the captain
It is
is
not just a post,
it is
and
was there
dened glory and thus convenient taincy
had been so
that
do not sleep when wind or weather changes,
shocking. Captains
they wake up.
it all
I
were shocked
that
in all his inherited
we had
and bur-
for the blame. Historically, cap-
an inhabitation, the boat a second skin.
parenthood, and even in your sleep an invisible monitoring
consciousness should wake to the least whimper, to the most
minute change
in
motion, never mind
a
dragged anchor and a two-
mile rocking drift on a rough night sea. It
was
all
the
more
A
our previous captain.
when
disturbing
robust, strapping
Carlos and
I
thought of
man, bred to the
sea,
Raphael had always been preter naturally alert and omnipresent, appearing on deck
someone
in the
of trouble. Raphael had been
at the least sign
midst of the main event
at all
times and out of that
example galvanized us to the same pitch of attention. a tight,
We
had made
mutually trusting crew on board the Bronzewing. Raphael ran
a very tight ship, but
we
also laughed, fished,
together. Raphael had guided
rudiments of English.
my
He was
Spanish, and
and dove for lobster I
had taught him the
good, very good for
my
first real
apprenticeship to the sea, and then suddenly he was gone, pro-
moted away from
us.
We
had privately mourned Raphael's
one of the larger yachts and the breaking up of our
4 2
]
little
rise to
team,
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA though we had said
little
to
one another
Now,
at the time.
was
it
easy to feel an outer confirmation of our inner sense that there was
our midst.
a stranger in
We were
surrounded by the far-stretching,
changing ocean every dav; trust in one another in the midst of this
unknown,
ever- shifting immensity was
important. The Bronzewing was
were
all
in
new
now
captain had let us
unspoken but incredibly
No
down.
matter that the
forging purposefully back to Rabida Island,
our hearts and minds temporarily
we
adrift.
Captains Courageous The
great irony was that in his all-knowing alertness,
allowed Raphael to very core;
lull
we were
tilled his role
us subtly into a lack of responsibility at the
alert as
crew members, but Raphael had so
of captain to capacity that
incapacitated in one crucial area:
sense of captaincy.
we had
Somewhere
We
we
ourselves had
had given up our
inside us
we had come
sion that ultimate responsibility lay elsewhere.
I
become
own
inner
to the deci-
told this story of
near disaster to a recently retired admiral from the U.S. navy. listened with a lifetime's experience at sea, looked
the eye, and
summed
it all
up: "A
good crew doesn't
me
He
straight in
let a
new
cap-
tain fail."
A
six-month-old child
congestive heart failure. ies
is
admitted to the hospital with early
The doctor prescribes
which stead-
the heart rate but can be lethal above a certain level.
tor places the decimal point in the
0.9
Rogoxin
wrong
mg instead of 0.09. An experienced nurse
[4 3]
The doc-
place and prescribes
catches the error and
David consults with another nurse.
W
They both
h
y
say
t
it is
e
too high; they take
it
to a second doctor for a second opinion; he does the recalculation
and
doctor was right. They give the Rogoxin
says the first
higher dose and the child dies.
Who had the captaincy?
inside themselves the nurses thought the doctor
no matter the outward circumstances and
They were
was the
that they
at the
Somewhere real captain
were powerless.
not; they had the captaincy, but not the courage of a cap-
tain's convictions.
The Lost Leader Sailing
back to our anchorage
in the
midst of that silence set
me to thinking of the edges and boundaries of everyday identity and especially the
way
that
we
Beyond the edge we have
where we often of the engine,
feel
I
live at the
edges of our identity in work.
established for ourselves lies the
unknown,
powerless and ready to blame. Above the throb
was desperate to blame someone, crying out
for
someplace to lodge an ultimate sense of responsibility, and panicking a
little
ders. But
because
how we
it
came
to rest
nowhere but on my own shoul-
long for that parental image of a captain or leader
to carry the burden.
"0 Captain! my Captain!"
Walt Whitman cried out to Lincoln, seeing stabilizing, organizing force, that
a terrible Civil
man's
own
life.
in his president a
could guide him, not only through
War, but through the generous, untidy sea of Whit-
Whitman's
lines of
4 4
poetry are generally long, mar-
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA You
velous, out- of- control wave-forms.
through the way reefs of
his
see the great outlines of life
poetry crashes and froths on the headlands and
whatever he was attempting to describe. But
Whitman
in Lincoln,
someone who was neither claimed by
intuited
the chaos
of the waves nor chained by the stability of dry land, someone living right at the conversational cliff edge of a
American the
Civil
War, Whitman worked
wounded and
man who
near shipwrecks —
-in
civil
bloody
In the
in frontline hospitals
the soon to be dead; he
as the great survivor, a
seemed
whole nation.
tending
must have seen Lincoln
lived through a
whole
series of
those perilous times, a true captain. Lincoln
to be steering the country even as
war, guiding a vessel that
seemed
to be
it
was convulsed by
coming apart
bitterness of slavery. Even in difficulty, the president
in the
seemed awake,
present, alert to the veering winds of conflict, trimming a
way
through the elements.
"0 Captain! my Captain! Ourfearful The ship has weathered every sought
The port
How
rack, the prize
we
won,
is
exulting
trip is done,
is
.
.
near, the bells I hear, the people all .
desperately
someone who
will
care of us without
we need
that captain.
awaken when we are
making
it
Someone
asleep,
to rely on,
someone
to take
too obvious, but someone obviously to
blame when everything goes wrong.
We
love a captain in our per-
sonal kingdom, our politics, our country, our workplace, and especially in
the reflection of our
captain, or
someone
else
is.
own
mirror. All or nothing.
The Boss. We
4 5
)
say, all
I
am
the
our resentments held
David in
suspension while the
image of that
In the
we
all
word
W
j
h
t
e
soaks up our sense of responsibility.
-knowing presence
is
everything
we
think
need. Until, that
is,
Lincoln
is
suddenly assassinated and
we
find
ourselves immediately orphaned in the world. In the all-powerful
presence of
a great leader,
personal compass,
it is
easv to remain unaware of our
a direction, a
willingness to
meet
life
own
unmedi-
ated bv anv cushioning parental presence. Whitman's crv for Lin-
coln
is
the crv for those selfsame qualities brought to
The shock of
heart of every individual.
shock of living without
his
life in
Lincoln's death
outer image, of having to
live
the
was the out that
legacy firsthand.
What do vou
Who
see
Walt Whitman?
are they vou salute,
and that one
ajter another
salute you?
—W alt "Salut au
The death of anyone a
close to us
is
Whit
m
a n
Monde!"
alwavs a form of salutation,
simultaneous good-bve to their physical presence and a deep hello
to a
more
intimate imaginal relationship
now
beginning to form
in
Mv captain in the outer world had essentially been killed, he had let me down, and was struggling to salute and recogtheir absence.
I
nize a personal sense of captaincy that lived in everyone.
emblematic to many,
own
all
me
also of the times in
which we
live
It
seems
—when,
for
of the outer captains have been done awav with; bv their
actions, bv
our cvnicism, or perhaps more truly because
4 6
]
we no
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA longer want captaincy to be sonalities but
movable and
static
and concentrated in single perprovenance of our own.
available, a
Waking the Captain In the tain
moment
that
I
had woken
in a panic
and seen the cap-
asleep in his bunk, simply for the sake of sheer survival
still
I
had not had time to wake him and was forced to rouse an equivalent responsibility in myself. at
one time or another
whom we able.
room
that the
relied on.
may be our
in
that
lives
have conferred captaincy
may be
It
It
We
we
or
woman
look and look and
some
they are deep inside
at
to this threshold
is
the person on
no longer present or sudden insight
in a
avail-
meeting
the end of the table cannot be
finally realize
insulation
therefore cannot be trusted.
come
when suddenly
their literal absence or a
man
all
they are not available,
which cannot be engaged and
Not because they
are bad people but
because they are not awake people. At that moment, whatever their outer are
title,
to us they are
we
captain.
At that
we
are
can rise to the occasion, thankfully emancipated.
We
are
a familiar
ushered into an adult-adult conversation with our
Something must be done:
We
ship, resign,
if all
we
have to wake
powers. call
of these avenues are blocked,
and go elsewhere.
Whenever we attempt something difficult there that
own
must speak out, take the wheel,
the rest of the crew ourselves, or,
abandon
moment we
parent-child relationship but
orphaned from
also, if
no longer the
some
is
always a sense
giant slumbering inside ourselves,
greater force as yet hidden from us.
We
[47]
some
look for better work by
first
David
W
looking for a better image of ourselves. in
order to find the strength to
live
j
h
We
out the
t
e
stir this
life
inner giant to
we want
life
for ourselves.
We want to live that image not for abstract heroic reasons but because we
are desperate for
more presence, more
ness in our work. But
first
we must be
responsiveness,
more
alert-
able to recognize the image.
Waking the Giant What do we
look for in the hidden giant, the captain that
living inside us, as yet asleep?
we
leaders
make this
see in the outside world.
good
us love the
world?
What
makes us want
seem
The same
is it
captains, the
qualities
What
good
we admire
is
good
in
are the qualities that
leaders, the
good bosses of
about them that brings out the best in us and
to shine not only for
them but
for
something we
to be discovering simultaneously in ourselves?
What
is
it
about a great leader that allows us to be ourselves despite or even because of our disappointed
and
difficulties?
when someone
responsibility, like
faults
when
Whitman, we
faith in
our
One
own
to be a captain?
when we
is
Is it
we
are losing a
lose
them we
because,
little
of the
also lose a little
that they are unutterably themselves. This
their stature so gigantic in
touch in our
sum
so existentiallv
calling?
at a frontier, a cliff
the
we
of the outer qualities of great captains, great leaders,
great bosses
makes
fails
without them
color and texture of life, that
are
in a responsible position fails in that
the captain
feel
Whv
own
of their
our imaginations. They are
edge, in a kind of exhilaration that
lives.
own
The
is
what living
we want
best stay true to a conversation that
to is
strange natures and the world they inhabit,
[4 8]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA and do not attempt to mimic others in order to get on. Though they
may
try sincerely to
make themselves
communicate with
others, these giants will not
everyone else in order to do
like
There
it.
is
no
replacing a Mandela, the present Dalai Lama, a Rosa Parks, a Martin
Luther King, a Churchill, a Susan
no more great leaders
more of those
them
like
Anthony, not because there are
B.
come but because
to
there are no
particular individuals.
Rosa Parks was the back of the bus,
it
not heroic
tired,
when
she refused to
move
was her own tiredness and she stood by it,
to
as if
she was reclaiming an edge of exhaustion she hadn't allowed herself to feel until then.
It
was the tiredness of work but
exhaustion of being invisible, of not being seen.
It
also the utter
was
as if the true
inner reality of her tiredness suddenly became the only thing visible to her, and having touched
it,
she was
anyone take even that awav from nature normally seen a
in a
bad
form of extreme tiredness
gold. She
was
a tiny individual
to be anyone but her tired
her.
light
that
self,
damned
if
she was going to let
She took an element of her
and by inhabiting
we normally
it
fully
turned
consider as lead, into
who, because of her intense looms
in giant fashion
refusal
over our
his-
torical perspective of the sixties.
At the other end of the spectrum, when we come to the image of a classic war leader,
I
think of Churchill, no bland product of
strategizing spin doctors, but a cigar-chomping, brick laying eccentric
of the
order.
first
No
Puritan either, Churchill did
morning work while comfortable drank
his
own
many times
in
bed and, during
very substantial weight in
over.
bankruptcy and
He had
of his
a long
life,
Champagne and brandy
suffered satire, discouragement, near
political exile, yet
the rocks of defeat in
all
when
Britain
was
drifting onto
May 940, he was awake and ready 1
[49]
to face the
David
W
h
v
r
e
shadows of Nazi Germany. He offered to the the need to please, but
and
"
British people not
blood, sweat and tears," the will to survive,
glimmering hope of future triumph. Britain had
a
wake because Churchill was
a giant self,
a giant to
independent of anv outer
recognition.
think also, against
I
Thatcher,
much
all
my
better instincts, of Margaret
loved in the United States but mostlv disliked
in the Britain that elected her to
power throughout the
eighties.
now Her
great triumph was to smash an old complacent political order that
was doing no one anv good, but to do chised it
many and
took
set
people
a certain species
at
it
in a
way which
disenfran-
each other's throats. That being
of obnoxious self-righteousness peculiar
onlv to herself to be able to do
it.
I
vividly
remember being back-
stage at an international event in San Francisco with the
Soviet leader Mikhail
said,
former
Gorbachev and former U.S. president George
Bush, waiting for the proceedings to begin. All
at
once, the door
blow open, and from the outer world, Margaret swept
seemed
to
with
the impact on our quiet backwater of a tropical cyclone. In
all
moments
in
she had roiled the calm backstage ambiance and bent
evervthing and evervone to her enormous will. Firstlv, sit
she told the former president of the Soviet empire to
down and
rest because
he looked exhausted, then she turned
upon the former leader of the
free
world and told him
certain terms that he looked piqued and
something from the plied. Finallv she
buffet.
no un-
must immediately get
George went with the
pinned Bernard Shaw of
in
tide
and com-
CNN up against the
wall
and insisted that he reveal the questions she was to be asked that evening in front of the television cameras. All protestations of jour-
I
5
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA nalistic
freedom were batted aside and Bernard was worn down and
snapped
up
sheepdog with an errant ewe
at like a
at least a tiny
until
he surrendered
morsel of information. This done, he was released
and allowed to assume an upright position. I
couldn't help but marvel at the sheer bloody-minded willful-
ness of the
woman. No matter mv
prejudices against her, she was
unutterably herself, a force of nature.
was nothing
essentially
wrong with
out of her political reign, ters,
it
I
thought to myself that there
her; whatever the negative
was the
fault
fall-
of those of us, her minis-
her political opposition, the voting population,
who
could not
stand up to her and be just as robust in our ability to say no. There
had been almost no one selves to
had had enough confidence in them-
despotism.
we
We
give
Thatchers of
in the
presence of that
up on our own powers, we allow for
a
kind of
allow an individual to be themselves in isolation
other individuality, which
all
When
meet her on equal terms.
kind of power
from
who
this
is
good
for neither the
Margaret
world nor the world on which they leave their
mark.
To wake the giant our
own
inside ourselves,
eccentric nature, and bring
the world.
We
selfish aspects
it
we
have to be faithful to
out into conversation with
can rely on the conversation
itself to iron
of our nature. In baseball parlance,
we
have to step up
to the plate; in the parlance of the soul's exploration, to the frontier of the play,
unknown where
out the
we must
step
there are great possibilities at
where we do not know where our courageous speech might
lead us.
We
have to say no just as firmly as
we
say yes. Yes,
we want
the attributes of leadership but often falter in the presence of the real thing.
5
I
]
David
W
h
y
e
t
Standing Up to Others We love a strong captain, but how do we live out our own captaincy in the
shadow of those who seem to overwhelm our own
nursling qualities by the overpowering nature of their character or
competency? selves to
Is it
because
we
have no equivalent image inside our-
match the outer image which
is
trampling over our world?
Margaret Thatcher was famous for her tyrannical hold over her ministers
—
almost
all
of them men, almost
Britain's traditional public schools.
of
them products of
They had absolutely no experi-
women behaving in this
ence of powerful
all
fashion. Perhaps they
had
read about certain Greek goddesses in their classical studies, but the only
woman
they would have had any daily contact with through
their schooling
would have been the matron; the school nurse. They
had absolutely no inner image of
a wilder,
more
willful femininity
to correspond to this outer political fury, and they
were almost
helpless before her. Orbiting her central sun, they
became
circle of yes-men
find that
work
same elemental nature
lives
we walk through
hunched to our necks, hold power over
on
a daily basis
us.
inside ourselves.
feeling powerless
Our
becomes,
which our
refusal to stand
Many
us.
A
who
feel certain that
our
own
voice,
vicious circle begins
our vulnerability and
we
will lose
our position, our career, and no one will ever look like the ministers
times in our
up to those who harass us
in effect, a lack of faith in
We
often have to
and bullied by those
refusal to speak out confirms
increases our invisibility.
we
the office door with our shoulders
and the nature that that voice bestows on in
a bland
caught in the grip of her gravitational influence.
order to stand up against a force of nature,
In
all
our job,
at us again.
Or,
who surrounded Margaret Thatcher, we may
not
[
S 2
)
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA even
know how
to begin a conversation with that kind of irrational
power. Sometimes
we
are rightlv quiet in the face of dire conse-
quences for our career or our families, but more often than not we are simplv living in the I
remember
failure to stand
shadow of our own
Joel, a consultant friend of mine, telling
to
moment
wake
CEO
up to one bullving
recounts with some wonder crucial
fears.
how
me
of his
earlv in his career. Joel
he had collapsed completelv
at a
of confrontation because there was no inner giant
inside him. Quite the contrarv, not onlv did Joel see himself
being fired irrational
if
he stood up to the
image of himself
CEO, but he had
the incredible and
living out the rest of his existence as a
bag lady on the streets of Berkelev,
his
then
home
in California.
The
prospect of being fired was not irrational to Joel, the image of himself as a
fear
bag ladv was. What Joel had stumbled into was an unspoken
which he had not vet explored, and which hid from him the
deeper strengths of in that
own
his
nature. As soon as he found himself
unspeakable territorv,
whatever Joel was most fronted the angrv
his will collapsed.
afraid of he
CEO, no matter
would that
native matter of a sex change. Joel talk to everv other fruitful career.
learned that
now
CEO
fears
that the
in his native California
if
is
that
he con-
little
imagi-
CEO
would
and bar him from
as a consultant in his organizational
moment.
become
involved the
was sure
fact
a
But Joel went on to sav that whatever courage he had
work came from
Joel realized that in order to be effective he had to
take an inventorv of his
own
it
surelv
The
own
would blind him
an unknown. Joel
made
fears;
at the
whatever he did not know of his
moments when he was
a further crucial distinction:
have to overcome his fears, he simply had to afraid of.
[S3]
know
faced with
He
did not
what he was
W
h
Almost always when we ask hard questions about leaders and leadership,
we
have to ask hard questions of ourselves, too.
to take an inventory not only of the gifts gifts
we
are afraid of receiving.
What
Quite often
it is
a
sudden
we
are
from speaking out and claiming the
we
life
have to give but of the afraid of,
we want
manner
what stops us
for ourselves?
horrific understanding of the intimate
extremely personal nature of the exploration. serious
We have
When we
ask in a
for those marvellous outer abstracts of courage,
we
captaincy, and greatness,
We
us to the very core.
set in
motion an exploration
that tests
suddenly realize the intensely personal
nature of all these attributes. Stephen Spender has
it
very well in his
poem, The Truly Great.
/
think continually of those
who were
Who,Jrom the womb, remembered the
truly great soul's history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are
and
Endless
Was that Should
singing.
Whose
of the
spirit,
And who hoardedfrom The
lovely ambition
clothedfrom head tofoot in song.
the Spring branches
desiresJailing across their bodies like blossoms.
What The
suns,
their lips, still touched with fire,
tell
is
precious
is
never toforget
essential delight
of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never
Nor
to
its
Never
deny
its
pleasure in the morning's simple light,
grave evening
to
and
demandfor
allow gradually the
love;
traffic to
smother
With noise andfog theflowering of the
[5 4]
spirit.
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA Near the snow, near the See
how
And by And
these
sun, in the highestfields
names arefeted by the waving
grass,
the streamers of white cloud,
whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who
Who
in their livesfoughtfor
life,
wore at their hearts thefire's center.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun,
And
left
the vivid air signed with their honour.
— Spender falling across
talks
S
tephen Spender
of hoarding from the spring branches the desires
our bodies
like
blossoms.
A
simultaneous harvest and
fading away, growth and disappearance, that involves an exploration
of both sides of
pearance
life's
equation, our continual appearance and disap-
as if rehearsing for the ultimate
disappearance in death.
there any other real source of courage? At the end signature in the
name was
an echo of Keats 's epitaph, "Here
writ in water."
acceptance that
making
air,
that
is left
Not
a
Is
only a vivid
lies
one whose
testament to loss but a courageous
we make our mark and then move
on, but
it is
the
makes the meaning.
Personality and Passion The
great question about leadership, about taking real steps
on the pilgrim's path,
how
to
is
the great question of any individual
make everything more
personal.
How to
understand
life:
life
or
leadership not as an abstract path involving devious strategies but
[55]
David more
like
W
the specific nature of your is
others at
do we
or
it is
substitute
we
concert pitch.
are heard.
path to glory, but ers. In their
voice,
and one of the voices must be
at all.
We
do not
try to
overpower
our own, but
else's for
we
are there,
we
We play the tension like a violin string at come and show
stop looking for heroes to
we do not ignore
us the
the courageous example of oth-
presence, or under the influence of their reputation,
attempt to find the same inner correspondences in our
own
that will allow us to take the next courageous step that
we
call
with
a familiarity
voice in order to have a conversation, nor
someone
We
and
gifts
desires and fears. In a conversation
no conversation
work with our
are present,
own
more than one
always
own
our
e
t
an inhabitation, a way of life, a conversation, a captaincy;
an expression of individual nature and
there
y
h
we
bodies
can also
our own. In order to
assume our captaincy, we should not genuflect
before the imposing array of other captains.
We must stop indulging Welch
in worshipful idolatry of Bill Gates or Jack
moments, they
surely wish to escape
from
our energies toward taking the short but
own
(in their
that idolatry),
difficult
frontier of presence
however
small,
is
where they can be
a
we
it
gifts
we have
received. For that
out from behind the insulation. In a way, standing of ourselves in our established our edge. established
is
courageous,
we have
to a surface,
to
come out
we come
work according
we
[
should look
S
6
}
a real
is
to
of hiding,
to an under-
where we have
Wherever our edge of understanding
the very place
is
will lead us right to the
desire. Taking any step that
way of bringing any
and put
next step on our
pilgrim's path to self-knowledge. So long as this path
conversation with the greater world,
wiser
more
intently,
has been
but
it is
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA also the very place that failure
I
fills
most with
us
had come to an edge that
Coming Out
I
fear. In
my own
captain's
had previously refused.
of Hiding:
Being the Ca ptain After our near disaster beneath the captain's failure?
how
this
new
It
cliff face,
had everything to do with being
captain,
whose
professional world
maritime experience, the boat,
its
to retreat into an insulated
room
did
I
in hiding.
see the
Some-
was made up of his
itinerary, its crew, its passengers
and the wild elements that surrounded
it,
had allowed
his attention
inside himself that had
immediacy of his outer world.
tion with the
how
In the
no connec-
rough territory
of the Galapagos, washed by the restless Pacific, the result was a neglect and forgetfulness, a sleep in which others could die.
There
is
sailing vessel
a
marvelous relationship between the
body of a
and the actual human body we try to inhabit every day
Our attempt
to convey an idea to others in the
in the
workplace.
office,
or our attempt to show others that
something to give,
Our
living
is
a
we
are useful and have
way of feeling physically present in
the world.
bodies and our personalities are vessels, and leadership, like
captaincy,
is
a full inhabitation
of the vessel. Having the powerful
characteristics of captaincy or leadership of any
form
is
almost always
an outward sign of a person inhabiting their physical body and the
deeper elements of their
own
nature. In the
through crucial moments of our work selves
life is
same way, to sleep
to eventually find our-
on the rocks, to put ourselves or our organizations
[57]
in danger.
David It is
W
h
y
e
t
not that a captain cannot sleep, but even in sleep theirs
should be a cultivated attentiveness, which
essential at sea.
is
something akin to the way we can wake ourselves for an important occasion even side alarm, except this
the deepest
a
Waking
in
accessible even in
tide or the
is
wind veers or the
in effect a litmus test of iden-
is,
leader or a captain, because the ability to is
weather
the hull increases.
response to change
unconscious modes what
way
—
captain wakes as soon as the at
time
have forgotten to set the bed-
continuous alertness
rhythm of the waves lapping
tity for a
we
modes of sleep. Every turn of the
A good
important.
is
if
at a specific
It is
occurring
at the surface
know even
in
speaks to the
that the attributes of seamanship have soaked right through to
the core of the captain's identity. Even
when
he or
a captain rests,
with the rhythm of the ocean. The
she does
it
in conversation
the edge
is
perceived right through to the interior, even in darkness,
even that
in sleep.
At
sea, this
edge
is
life
of
way
the skin of the boat and the
edge responds to the living commands of the ocean and the
moving
air.
This edge
is
more
courageous conversations
often than not represented by
we must
all
continually have to keep in
touch with the dynamics affecting work; by staying aware of elemental edge,
we
can
more
the
this
readily keep to the bearing indicated
by our inner compass.
Once we begin courageous speech, nature, exactly the
the particular tain of
and
our
way
to engage those elemental edges through daily
we
same way it
our
own
vessel
and
start to build a living picture of
a captain gets to
know her
reacts to the elements that surround
soul's journey,
we
it.
As cap-
feel the angle of the sails, the creak
strain of the ropes, the lean of the tiller,
and learn the particular
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA hum
and song of our conversation with the elements.
this
It is
con-
versation that gives us not only our powers of survival but a music
of exhilaration for our journey and arrival. It
me
seems to
that every
human
life
has the elements of a sea
voyage, of a journey and an arrival. That every a vessel that contains
deep
responsibility.
to another as
innumerable other
That
this vessel
we go through important epochs
which
but not fixed, the
known
tion.
lives for
is
also like
unknown
of our
lives,
like a captaincy
—
a
sea
and that
that
is,
an
necessarily attentive, powerful, and responsible,
more
vessel
is
is
which we have
journeys from one
every soul's journey in the world identity
human life
like a
meeting place of the elements
and the unknown sea must join
Out of this conversation we
in
which
in vital conversa-
create a directional
movement
in
the world that not only ensures our survival but creates exhilaration, the
wind on our
face, an
immersion
in the
present whilst
we
simul-
taneously experience the joy of speeding toward our destination.
To
my mind,
this captaincy, this responsible
and responsive
presence, this creation of an elemental meeting place inside oneself
or in one's organization or society,
but one
in
swirl
is
when much
under immense
around
us.
Our
of our
new ocean
of the
is
collectively engaged.
way we
We
see and describe our-
from the currents of change
strain
that
old fixed, terrestrial ideas and the language to
describe those ideas do not ity
not just an individual dynamic,
which the whole of humanity
are living at a time selves
is
seem
terribly well adapted to the fluid-
We
are each being impacted in enor-
world.
mous, far-reaching ways by the
tides of ecological
and technological
change and the sudden realization that we inhabit a
complex, intimate universe than we imagined. We
I
5
9
much more
intuit that
we are
— a
David about to cross abilities,
a great
W
expanse to
a
y
h
new
e
t
place, but our maritime
our sense of captaincy, our courage, our responsiveness
individually and collectively
—
are under severe test.
Imagination Amid Complexity The
work today
severest test of
our imaginations and
identities.
work and doing good work
not of our strategies but of
is
For a
human
being, finding
good
one of the ultimate ways of making
is
a
break for freedom. In order to find that freedom in the midst of the
complex world of work, we need mental
identities truer to the template of our
understand that
want to need that
we
same sense of burden
replicate that
a sense of spaciousness
simplicity based
identity it is
who
is
unique
life,
courageous simplicity
most often buries us
— a
in layers of insu-
impossible to touch our best
we may be
full,
busy and
lose our calling,
wake up and assume
we
We
selves.
gifts.
Our
the effort needed to sustain our waking
The day may be
have forgotten
hierarchy,
our inner
form of absence. Like the captain asleep below, we
become exhausted from
we
in
our simpler necessities, the attempt to create
through which
versation,
own natures. We must
and freedom, but find we can claim
living out a radical,
complex professional
identities.
ele-
on the particular way we belong to the world we
inhabit. If we ignore
lives take the
more
carry enough burdens in the outer world not to
freedom only by
lation
to cultivate simpler,
why we we
the captaincy
own,
it is
are busy.
We
we
lose the con-
lose our sense of captaincy.
To
no matter the perceived outer
have to realize that our
entirely our
incredibly busy, but
lives are at stake; the
one
possible for each of us to live.
[6 0]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA Death
is
much
closer to each of us then
postpone that living
We
as if
we
speak of genius
some of that
will admit;
means
lies in its
we must not
will last forever.
when we
speak of leadership, hoping for
word
elusive genius in ourselves, but the
Latin originality
Galapagos
we
simply, the
of a place.
spirit
being unutterably
genius in
its
The genius of
the genius of an indi-
itself;
vidual lies in the inhabitation of their peculiar and particular spirit in
conversation with the world. Genius
and no other
The
is
simple and takes a
life fully,
just as
we
find
life
it,
pilgrimage to attain, to
and
in that inhabitation, let
We
everything ripen to the next stage of the conversation.
because that real.
is
The core
tions real.
itself
is
thing.
task
inhabit our
something that
is
do
this
how we make meaning and how we make everything act of leadership
must be the
act of
making conversa-
The conversations of captaincy and leadership
are the
conversations that forge real relationships between the inside of a
human being and the world
it
their outer world, or
serves. All
between an organization and
around these conversations, the world
proceeding according to mercies other than our own. This ultimate context to our work. near.
We
must know how easy
onto the rocks and put our
and everything with us to
tell
The it is
cliff
edge of mortality
to forget,
lives to hazard.
in creation, if
we
1
]
easy
it is
Everything
are listening,
us so.
6
how
is
is
is still
is
is
the
very
to drift
at stake,
in conversation
V
/
A
S
a r
t
fo
Navigation
r
Ambition, Horizon, and Arrival
The
behind the cabin door and with one
bell clanged
hungry
last
look toward the horizon, the passengers and crew went below for the waiting meal.
One
brave soul
who wished
to remain
on deck
was bullied back into the cabin by the imploring, anguished, Spanish of the
where
I
matter.
I
cook, and vanished
was.
I
didn't have a choice;
I
ordinary sunset. literally
filling
I
stayed
was on watch, but
it
didn't
was hungry but very glad to be
wind was no ordinary wind, and the
was
through the door.
at last
on
It
was no sunset
fire,
alone at the wheel. This
fiery sky
at all.
behind
me was no
The sky was red because
it
plumed and clouded by an erupting volcano
the western sky.
of the eruption
left
The strength of the wind came from
lifting
sphere and stirring the
the heat
great draughts of air into the upper atmostill
surface air
below to
life.
We
were
in a
veritable Mistral of wind, a powerful but steady force blowing
toward the volcano, replacing the fiery
lifting air
being drawn toward the
summit.
Once
alone,
I
was able to enter
[6 2]
a joy that goes
beyond the
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA bounds of any happiness you can show time, as
phins
if
my good
to push
in
company. At the same
over the edge, a crowd of dol-
spirits
came leaping southward toward our bow,
and disappearing.
I
and then forward
at
looked back
if
might never see
I
leaving Galapagos at last and
it
and exulted
sail,
beauty of the islands that had become thing as
glowing, late afternoon sky
at the
the taut mass of
their fins curving
my home.
again. This
moving on
me
I
everything
work and
life
from the age of thirteen had been bent toward
work or beyond
a place like
There Lives,
at is
a
the
now
Galapagos, and
do what,
I
I
had desired
uncharted
seas.
I
I
had felt
set
my
arrival in a
myself to travel
both vulnerable and
same time.
strange
way
whenever we
in
which
at
each crucial juncture in our
Leave the familiar behind,
grown-up equivalent of parental
upon those images and inner resources dreaming voungster. The divorced
voung woman who
we
help, but
in a
look for the
are also
thrown back
that are the province of the
woman
first
we become
we
certain way, childlike again. In our vulnerability
recalling the
was
Evervthing in the previous decade of my young
that horizon into
emboldened
work
life.
I
had the profound
in a
a
to
sheer
at every-
last tour.
—moving on
did not know. Beneath the surface incandescence regret of leaving a place that had given
looked
I
my
was
at the
sits
entered
in her it
empty house
in marriage.
The
retiring professor recalls his first enthusiastic discoveries in the subject
he has read for a lifetime. The jobless manager begins in her
grief to familiarize herself with possibilities at the very center of feeling critical
unwanted. The single most useful power inside us times
is
at these
the expressive imagination, that part of us that
dreams and creates images representative of both our deepest desires and the
way we
feel
we
are
made
[63]
for a continuing
work
in
David The part of
the world.
Every work begins time
new
y
e
t
on the moving
we
sea
as a child
as
an intimation and discovery. Like the
we walk to
the edge of a Yorkshire field, glimpse
We do not know
horizon, and immediately want to go there.
where the horizon tion, a notion that
will take us.
We
somehow we
have a glimmering, an inclina-
will find
present knowledge. The excitement
is
it,
glad and unthinking, the
something bevond our
palpable and belongs to the
horizon and our young anticipatory bodies
toward
at the
same time. We run
mere presence of horizon
grants us a sense of freedom. This sense of freedom to physical landscape. at
nine years old,
it
as if
I
I
remember
I
I
had. In
a secret
it
I
code to
my future
ence
when
twelve years old
I
first
notion of studying marine biology. To television set
I
in the
screen of your present
life
It
was
literate
as
it
horizon
and conceived the strange
my young
mind, the small,
on which he and
world that could
sail
it
his ship Calypso
gave
vou
me
a feel-
off the small
into something astonishing and inde-
world inhabited by creatures and
and deliciously wild.
which,
had the same experi-
appeared, represented an unaccountable vastness;
was work
—
read
saw Jacques Cousteau on our
tiny black-and-white television screen
rounded square of the
life
glimpsed an imaginative, a lifetime to reach.
scribable, a
not confined
the absolute sense of excitement
which was worth taking
ing that there
is
itself
when picked up my first book of poetry and
had discovered
turned out,
at
call a life.
Horizons
First
a
h
us staring hard at the horizon for celestial
clues as to our relative position
first
W
life as
tidal forces unfamiliar
horizon and excitement.
[64]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA Each of
remembers
a
us,
somewhere
in the
moment where we
and beckoning to
We
us.
growing consciousness
biography of our childhood,
felt a
portion of the world calling
are creatures of belonging, and as our
forms we look for the expressions
as a child
of our belonging in every quarter.
Out of this
sense of belonging,
the world seems to call to us, to recognize us, and to speak to us directly, the voice itself
an embodiment of our particular nature
and the way that nature finds
home
a
in the
conversation b etween ourselves and the
Sometimes we
are able to
erless
wor ld
remember and
conversation, but sometimes as a child
world. Aj^j5est,_this becomes our work.
follow the flow of this
we were made
by the enclosing adult world, and were bullied into forgetting
the horizon
it
represented. Later, in the middle of the road of our
adult lives, in a state of utter forgetfulness,
Dante,
in a
we may wake
like
dark wood, looking for some inner compass bearing that
will steer us to the
freedom of
that horizon again.
The inner com-
pass almost alwavs leads us back toward that childhood
spent so
much time
become
a child again but to
filled
pow-
to feel
trying to leave behind.
remember
We
we
have
return there not to
those instinctual joys which
our imaginations and growing bodies and set our enthusiastic
something trustable about the
course into the world. There
is
nal enthusiasms of the very
young
way we
are
is
probably the most famous investiga-
phenomenon. At twentv-eight, snowbound
of 1798-1799, in a small and unwelcoming his sister,
toward the
made.
The poet Wordsworth tor of this
that point directly
origi-
Dorothv, Wordsworth
felt as far
German
from
his
in the
hill
winter
town with
work and
tion as he ever would: lost, directionless, bereft of inspiration, his previous vouthful
enthusiasm burned
[
6
S
]
down
vocaall
of
to nothing. In that
\
David frozen winter they had for
and
priest,
a deaf
W
h
y
company only
their landlady, a French
neighbor with bad teeth.
friend about the awfulness of the situation:
e
t
He
later
we
a
"With bad German, bad
English, bad French, bad hearing and bad utterance
ine
lamented to
you
will imag-
have had very pretty dialogues." In the midst of
this chilly,
inarticulate exile, with the direct emotional help of his sister, he
began to
call
on the only resource
memories of what tains
it
had meant
available to him: his
as a child to
own
grow amid
physical
the
moun-
and lakes of his native Cumbria.
He began with
the
memory
of himself as a five-year-old child
by the rivejtjiexwent: "A naked savage, Then,
as
Stephen Gill says in
Wordsworth
releases
his
memories of birds nesting among
verse
woodcocks
of hooting to the owls across
stealing a is
in the
moon-
Windemere, and of
rowing boat on Ullswater. The tone of the
awed, reverent, above
by which
thunder shower."
biography of the poet,
the perilous crags, of snaring light,
in the
all
grateful for the process
a ten-year-old could hold
unconscious intercourse
With eternal beauty drinking
A pure
in
organic pleasurefrom the lines
Of curling Of waters
mist, orfrom the
coloured by the cloudless moon.
Through the not only kept
smooth expanse
faith
winter's end, had
physical aliveness of
deep memory, Wordsworth
with his newly forming identity
composed 400
as a
poet but, by
lines of blank verse. Lines
[66]
which
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA were to form the core of his adult poetic voice and the
_M-^ ^
greatest work, The Prelude.
basis of his '
rv>
Jh
Energy and Memory In the small library dedicated to his
work
actuallv held the surviving manuscript paper
rapidlv began to
form The
Prelude.
crammed
excitement, verses
It is
in
Grasmere,
I
have
on which Wordsworth
redolent with discovery and
pen, pencil; long rows
at all angles, in
of words springing out of the ground of his memory. Looking at it,
you see not only
first
shaping of our
a
personal breakthrough taking place, but the
own contemporary
appreciation of the natural
world. There could be no Environmental Protection Agency, no Sierra Club,
no Discovery Channel, no National Parks without the
Wordsworth^ of this world who
began to move our
hrst
lips
again in
reverence to and participation with th e natural order. In Wordsworth's verses
g row
we
are taught to see creation
in , a place indicative
necessarily put any single
once again
as a place to
of other worlds parallel to ours which
work we do
as
human
beings into smaller
and saner perspectives.
Wordsworth's absolute gies they represent
experience, given a
is
a
faith in physical
memory and the
ener-
testament to the way a deeply personal
work and
a vessel to carry
it,
can speak to thou-
sands of others and affect, in pivotal ways whole worlds and ways
of thinking yet to be born. This private
work made manifest
unknown
to us,
is
is
one of the great beauties of
in a very public world.
a
Wor dsworth
,
in every conversation we have about the beauty
of a mountain, a seascape, or a skv.
Work
[67]
at its
best
is
the arrival in
David
W
h
y
e
t
an outer form of something intensely inner and personal; and the act of a
working
—
itself
a
bridge between the public and the private,
bridge of experience which can b e an agony and an ecstasy to
cross.
The Inner Template of Belonging To
worth
a child, the
world
said, The Child
mother of the Woman).
\
is
is father
a
beckoning horizon, and
Man
of the
Whatever
(and
as
Words-
we might add drew
particular horizons
today
us as a
child are the original patterns and templates of our adult belonging.
They
are clues as to
how we find our measure
faction in the world.
his uncle Michael's ability to
clean, and set to right anything metallic or mechanical.
he looked up from his schoolbooks fashion,
with
"I
just
want
a big load of
denly
already marked:
at his
mother and
to be driving around with
washing machines
knew her son
as she
if
my
One
said in
dreamy
mother sud-
in the
world
will have to
is
mechanic or he may not, but
a
he wants any measure of happiness,
it
have to hold the qualities of the practical world of which he It
day
uncle Michael,
in the back." His
had not before. His way
He may become
whatever work he does,
dreams.
satis-
My own nephew, despite his parents' hopes for
academic accomplishment, worships fix,
of happiness and
do with the way things
fit
will
now
together, one to
another, or the flow and satisfaction of physical things working right, or
put right. Metals and wood, rubber and
the objects of his love; already he
is
plastic, these are
beginning, at twelve years old,
[6 8]
CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA to build household furniture in his parents' garage. his
childhood belonging
is
him
there for
The template of
to create his adult work.
have witnessed the same love of flight and things that ing
company
a very
—
young
affections that
To
age.
in a
we haw
compared
painful
difficult to
bring to mind?
Wordsworth
birth
is
to our present
life,
again.
rises
Hath had
else
with
us,
where
our
life's Star,
its setting,
And cometh from
cfar:
Not
in entireforge fulness,
And
not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who lies
is
our home:
about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin
Upon But
He
to close
the growing Boy,
beholds the light, and whence
He sees
it
travel, still is
And by
itflows,
in his joy;
The Youth, who dailyfartherfrom the
Must
is
mind
at
to ^betray
Or find our original dreams and
but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that
Heaven
engineer's
world which has been formed from th e
forgotten?
memories
Our
many an
the Boe-
exp eriences and recognition s.
claj of those early if
in
betray the se childhood intuitions
our adult participation
But what
began
fly at
I
east
Nature's Priest,
the vision splendid,
6 9
}
and therefore too
David Is
W
y
h
t
e
on his way attended;
At length the
Andfade
Man
perceives
it
die away,
into the light of common day.
—
"Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood"
The poem one of
beautifully titled. Intimations of Immortality.
is
us, despite millennia of theological investigation, really
knows where we come from or where we
know how our most of us have
we
Not
are a part.
daily
work
actually
intuition
We
especially
do not
into that perspective, but
some^re ater
intimations of
The
fits
go.
contin uurn of which
a lifeline to a greater participation
is
beyond our present work, beyond our present horizon. Without our work finds no greater context. Remembering
beyond our present but keeping
it
daily
is
as a constant, inspiring
our powers. Sooner or place in our lives light of
commute
later
where
we
this life's
one of life's great
companion
forget,
we
is
it
journey
disciplines,
beyond most of
lose sight,
we come
to a
the vision splendid begins to fade into the
common day.
Every person comes to a place,
at
one time or another
in their
maturation, of complete loss and deadness, a stark and frightening
absence of creativity and enthusiasm, where
away from us
like a tide.
Our
ate
it.
This
lifeline to
no is
longer, and
we
the very point
any future
inside us, the child
fully.
look enviously
at
The old magic seems those
still
able to cre-
where deep physical memories
we want
is still
seems to retreat
desperate grasping after the outgoing
energy only marks our desperation more to be ours
life
for ourselves. In effect,
somewhere
running enthusiastically toward
[
7
are our
a
horizon
Q^ww^^
3~
-«U:-Wtu».
— j
U.
^rTi-« "t^JU^. c^a_^
^ ^ a-^ cu^t Jt^e^
«-^i
^
Continued from
The
New
front flap
and BusinessWeek for
York Times
ful corporate
workshops, brings
to finding fulfillment identities at work.
gifted
the
is
and powerful
Unknown
Sea,
you
horizons where before you saw onh- walls.
will see is
power-
experience
lyrically inspired
prose. After reading Crossing
This
his
practicality
and nurturing our deepest
and personal
Whyte's
in
new
This unique blend of poetrv,
storytelling,
wrapped
a
a
life-changing
shaping of identitY
DAVID
in
WHYTE
work about discover and the conversation with the world.
is a
Yorkshire-born poet and
Fortune 500 consultant. Usincx poetrv to
a
brincr
understanding to the process of change, he has
introduced
poetrY
companies
such
into
as
Bristol-Myers Squibb. American Express, Boeing,
Kodak, and Toyota, helping clients understand individual and organizational creativity and appU' that understanding to vitalize
and transform the
workplace. In addition to his four Yolumes of poetry, David al
Whyte
is
the author of the nation-
and BusinessWeek bestseller The Heart Aroused:
Poetry
and
America.
the
He
Presentation
lives
of the
Soul
with his family
in
in
Corporate
the Pacific
Northwest.
Jacket:
design bv Joss
Morpheu
Front jacket illustration: Winslou Homer, Sunlight on the Coast, 850. The Granger Collection I
©
Photograph or the author
Visit
©
Michael Collopv
our website
at:
uuu.penguinputnam.com
a
member
of
Penguin Putnam
Inc.
The
bestselling author
of The Heart Aroused and internationally
renowned
Fortune 500 consultant explores
work
as
an
opportunity for the
"David Whyte's exploration of the meaning
work could not come
of"
With
a
poet's sensibility, he lays bare the terror and joy,
the loneliness and participation, the con-
nection of our inner and outer worlds possibility that
good work holds
our
this beautiful
Keep
lives.
deepest discovery of
and you
your
amid our
life.
at a better time.
will discover, as
slightly
mad
the
for each oi
book with you
have, a
I
—
still
point
world."
Peter Senge
lor
of The
and coauthor of
Fifth I)>
Schools That lea
"This may be the most consoling piece
oi
writing ever published on the subject of work.
Not work
Hobbcsian
as
toil,
personal achieve-
ment, or financial gateway, but work can be deeply
expi
iat
and awakening.
Crossing
ig
a
as a life-
Unknown
the
Sea
like
is
Grail that reconfers dignitv to what has been
demeaned by our preoccupation with monetary wealth.
I
felt
bilitv that
"cadilv to
calmed bv
work
restored to the
proceed slowlv ar
c in
meaning and
it,
realization.
Haw ken
-Paul
author of The Ecolopv of C
'Whatever
ou do, don
corporate poet.
He
is a
land of the bottom
c
t
who works
poet
line.
Returning ii?
nd world of verse from the land line
fits
with what he
tells
cannot choose either the tist inside
vou. There's
a
o\ oi
in
t
pouoiv the bottc
executives:
artist or the
'Y
pragn
place lor both.
The
t
the
to
New
York
I