“No One Told Me”

“No One Told Me”

I can’t count how many times in my life I have thought this…

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I thought, following the separation that resulted from a decade inside a failing marriage.

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I thought driving home to Dallas from Los Angeles, after dropping my first-born baby girl at college.  

And yet again, 4 years later:  “NO ONE TOLD ME.” I cried entering my empty home after taking my last child, my son, to college.  

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I said angrily while driving home in 2014 upon receiving a diagnosis of PMR (Polymyalgia Rheumatica).

“NO ONE TOLD ME.” I reflect today as I recognize that our country is engaged in a kind of political divisiveness and violence that lead to the storming of the capital on January 6th, 2020 and to an assassin’s bullet nearly killing former President Trump at an outdoor rally on July 13th, 2024.

NO ONE TOLD ME…

That this life would increasingly stun and humble me again!  And yet, again! Must I constantly surrender the idea that through my actions/choices today, I can safely insure the future I want tomorrow?  Must uncertainty forever reign supreme?

Was this the point all along?  

I find this both cruel AND merciful.  Maybe akin to transition labor in the birth process.  Is there no other way for us to learn?  Surely there must be, because this feels needlessly harsh.  

But is it? 

If I compare my disclosures that began this post to birthing a child, they too have all the signs of a new life.  Indeed, each of those events “schooled my intelligence to make it a soul” (John Keats). Each was a disruption of an old order, and an announcement of a new one coming into being.  Let’s hear from a young David Whyte, probably around 35 years old, when he penned the poem, NO ONE TOLD ME.  I suspect he too was on the cusp of a new epoch in his life. There must have been some annunciation which called an end to his former life or his former understanding of how to navigate his life. 

NO ONE TOLD ME by David Whyte

No one told me
it would lead to this.
No one said
there would be secrets
I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing,
seeing brought me
loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing
or speaking.
Speaking and writing poetry
I unsheathed the sharp edge
of experience that led me here.

No one told me
it could not be put away.
I was told once, only,
in a whisper,
“The blade is so sharp—
It cuts things together
—not apart.”

This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood,
from being blindfold,
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.

And after reading President Joseph R. Biden’s July 8, 2024 letter to Democrats, the stanza immediately above grabbed my attention. It did again, after learning the assassination attempt on former President Trump. And yet again, with the 7.21.24 announcement that President Biden would not run for re-election.

I was told once, only,
in a whisper,
“The blade is so sharp—
It cuts things together
—not apart.”

Is the poem pointing me toward some kind of guidance for my troubled heart and soul in that next stanza? “My country ‘tis of thee” will you remain a land of liberty, for all?  With even the Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney Republicans concerned by our nation’s current attraction to autocracy. These knife blades of sudden change are indeed sharp. The ever present risk of political violence seems to live just under the surface of our daily round. As well as climate catastrophes of wild weather patterns and storms as well as the worldwide political upheavals and violence. As this swirls around me now, I find myself where the poet left the poem:

“This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood,
from being blindfold,
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.”

But here too,  is there also a kind of guidance? 

My future full of blood, (the ugliness of fear mongering, the potential of political assassinations, rumored threats with language like “revolution” and “civil war,” potentially the worst hurricane season underway as the war in Ukraine and in Gaza continue on without apparent end in sight) from being blindfold (unable to see the future) hands outstretched feeling a way along its firm edge.  That last phrase…hands outstretched… implies both a kind of agency, (I make the choice to reach out) and a kind of need.  What a paradox!  I am both in need of visible and invisible help and while possessing agency within me to move, albeit carefully along some firm edge. 

What is that firm edge? 

My abiding trust and faith in becoming.  Mine and my country’s.  Like all those other “NO ONE TOLD ME” moments in my life, I will again move along the firm edge of my true values, my soul’s code, knowing that there will be new life ahead, together, even if I cannot see how it will come to be.

“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?”

John Keats

To which I respond, “I do John Keats, and your words become my firm edge as I find my way.”