Van Gogh, Dr Who and our deepest human longing
“Because you were so truly you,
so full of hope, so full of fear,
because you risked your everything,
I, too, will risk, will dare.”(from Love Letter to Vincent by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
Imagine receiving a letter from the future that tells you that what you did, who you were, however insignificant or unsuccessful it felt at the time, however at odds you felt with yourself, others and the world around you, matters, because it touched other lives beyond what you can currently see or imagine.
This is the premise of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem Love Letter to Vincent. I’ve included the poem in its entirety at the end, but here are a few lines to give you a taste:
“Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
a letter sent back in time,
a letter that impossibly arrives
just when you despair,
just when you believe no one cares about your art,
the letter that reaches you to say you are loved
in that exact moment you feel unlovable.”
As I read the poem, a deep longing in me unfurls and reaches for each word as an affirmation that I want to offer my own struggling self across space and time: to versions of my younger self in moments of despair and to my present self with all her questions, doubts and all those places inside her that are entangled in things that feel unclear or heavy or difficult in a way that’s exhausting.
I don’t know if Rosemerry knows about an episode of Dr Who in which Van Gogh is taken via time travel to the present day Musee d’Orsay in Paris. My dear friend Sinead introduced me to this 3.5 minute clip from the episode. I encourage you to watch it here before you read on.
I have to confess that I had never watched Dr Who before. But this particular part makes me cry every time I watch it and even thinking of it brings tears to my eyes. I am curious, what it touches in you?
This moment, when Van Gogh is able to see that his suffering, isolation, poverty and struggle with mental illness, the absence of recognition for his work during his own lifetime, which presumably made him doubt himself and greatly added to his distress, were not in vain but that much later, his art is loved and rated amongst the best in the world, captures something that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human.
We all have a profound longing to be seen and received in our being and doing, and in our offering of our gifts.
And yet, so often, for long stretches in our lives, we may feel at odds with the world, unheard, unseen, unappreciated, unsure whether what we are doing matters.
I’m sure you, like myself, know that feeling, when you have poured all your heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into something that matters to you, and then it doesn’t land in the world in the way you hoped it would. This could be a creative offerings, or an intimate relationship or a business. It could just be a small moment when you share something that feels important yet vulnerable with someone and that person doesn’t get or acknowledge the significance in any way. Or it may be a big thing like putting your work out into the world and being met by the deafening silence of no ‘takers’, no bookings, no notice being taken.
Being received in our gifts is such a crucial part of our sense of self and highlights that we are profoundly relational beings. Yet, for most of us who live in the dominant capitalist culture, our set up and lifestyle likely means that this vital aspect of belonging, inter-being and inter-flourishing is hard to come by.
Where being in community is no longer the norm, and where success, work, and our offerings to the world are squeezed into narrowly defined boxes, the acknowledgment and celebration of who we are and what we bring can be sorely lacking.
And of course, many of us are much more tuned into our inner critic’s voice that tells us that what we do and who we are, are not enough. Many of us don’t see ourselves in a loving way or give ourselves positive feedback and appreciation. We have blindspots not just when it comes to our ‘negative’ but also with regard to our brilliance and beauty. And whilst it’s important work to build a sense of self love, and create practices that take us out of the loop of criticism and into a habit of reflecting a fuller spectrum of who we are back to ourselves, we also do really need each other for this!
We need spaces and people where we feel safe enough to bring ourselves and our gifts forth in perfect imperfection, as work in progress, as being good enough and committed to growing.
Being heard and seen in who we are, what we long for and what we bring to the world encourages us and empowers us to take the next step and keep going. It brings clarity, grows our confidence, expands our perspective and injects joy into what we do. Because, let’s face it, otherwise it can be pretty tough to keep showing up with our hearts, our ideas, our longings.
- Do you have people, relationships or a community where you feel received and seen on an ongoing basis? If so, that is a precious gift.
- Do you let those that you witness know that you see their being and doing, their process of bringing themselves into the world in a unique way?
- How and where do you regularly celebrate/get celebrated for not just the obvious successes and milestones like a new job, the completion of a course of study, a new house, a better salary but the ongoing accomplishment of being and becoming yourself in a world that makes it very hard?
For me, reading the poem and seeing the Dr Who clip is a potent reminder to make a practice out of letting people know they are seen and heard.
It matters.
A lot.
Try it out and you’ll see what I mean.
Maybe right now, you could think of a person who you’d like to appreciate for their way of being, for their efforts, for their authenticity, integrity, for continuing to show up despite the difficulty of doing so?
In what ways could you offer or expand your way of being present for others in this way and ensure they know that their efforts are being received? Is there someone you know who could really do with a reminder of how they impact people in big and small ways? Maybe it’s a friend, maybe it’s the person in the shop whose name you don’t know but who is always friendly and helpful?
And on the other side of this, do you have experiences of someone really seeing and honouring you?
A teacher or parent, a relative or peer, perhaps even a stranger? How is it to recall the ways they let you know that you and what you create(d) matters? Whether you honour this person quietly in your thoughts or pick up the phone, send an email or, better even, tell them to their face, if you can, I bet it will bring goodness into their and your day.
The beauty of this is that each appreciation is the start of a loop or a ripple of giving and receiving, seeing and being seen. Both the appreciator and the one being appreciated are richer for it. The person who touched your life by seeing you, is now being seen by you, if you let them know that their presence made a difference to you. And when we receive or give in this way, and see the impact of these simple gestures of acknowledgement, we are likely to want to offer this to each other more.
I want to close these reflections by sharing a short practice I recorded for you that invites you to offer this deeply longed for honouring out into the five dimensions of self, other, community ancestors & descendants, and Spirit. You can listen to it here.
And, as promised, here is the full poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (I highly recommend checking out her website A hundred falling veils where she posts a poem every day.
Love Letter to Vincent
Oh Vincent,
There is in my heart
a small yellow room
with a small wooden table
with a dull yellow cloth
and a rounded clay vase
with your name scrawled in blue,
and it’s bursting with sunflowers,
all of them open, all of them turning,
turning toward the light,
which is to say the flowers face every which way.
There is light everywhere we dare to turn.
Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
a letter sent back in time,
a letter that impossibly arrives
just when you despair,
just when you believe no one cares about your art,
the letter that reaches you to say you are loved
in that exact moment you feel unlovable.
Let this be the letter in which you see
the sunflowers you sowed a hundred thirty years ago
have re-seeded themselves in me
and now grow rampant in my days,
golden petalled and flagrantly lovely.
And your stars, swirling, your wheat fields goldening,
your cypress reaching, your church bells unsinging,
you will find them all my words.
This is how love replants itself —
more love, old friend, more love.
Because you were so truly you,
so full of hope, so full of fear,
because you risked your everything,
I, too, will risk, will dare.
Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
the one that helps you see
how your life is linked to eternity.
Let this be a letter that says thank you, Vincent,
for teaching us new ways to see beauty.
Perhaps this letter will arrive
when you are in the yellow room,
or perhaps the asylum, perhaps in Neuwen,
and you, surprised to find it addressed to you,
will receive it and let the words in,
then hear your own startled voice saying,
It matters? as you pick up your brush
and begin again.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
