Questions to Unmake Your Life
NarrativeRx Virtual Workshop, Saturday 11th April, 2020
Thankyou to the 20+ people that joined us in this online workshop. As we practiced using the various functions of Zoom, raising hands and muting/ unmuting ourselves, we had our first experience of shared connection.
We ran this workshop to bring people together in this time of change and isolation. Our text was David Whyte’s poem “Sometimes” (posted below).
Our prompt for the session was: “Write about the questions that are patiently waiting for you”.
It was joyful to see new and familiar faces today. Our group zoomed in from Amsterdam, South Africa, Chile, the UK, Canada and across the USA.
This poem asked many questions of us, and we mused over the “tiny
but frightening requests” that surface when we slow down and become present to ourselves. Tiny questions can have such massive implications in our life and they call into question our present, and what lies beyond this moment.
The first half of the poem takes us on a journey, moving “like the ones
in the old stories” who were so in touch with themselves and nature that they could arrive at a place that was “beginning to lead everywhere”.
From that place of stillness, there are “questions that can make or unmake a life” that wait there patiently, no matter how we might push them away with modern life.
One participant specifically noted the relevance of this poem to the world events surrounding the Covid-19 virus and how the enforced slowing down bring those questions to us, wether we like them or not.
Recalling author Arundhati Roy’s recent essay in the Financial Times, she felt that isolation had pulled her into the portal that Roy describes:
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
As we wrote and responded to shared writings, we noted the way we experience asking questions about past and future in our bodies, not just in our minds. When those questions arise, sometimes we are not ready to answer, and they must wait patiently until the time is right, despite the social urging that insist we attend to them now.
Another participant left us with a quote to remember in times of difficulty that “sometimes to untie the knot, you have to slacken the rope”. This rounded out our conversation by reminding us of the need for self-compassion and recognition that we are living through an exceptional time. In poetry, we found a way to share an experience despite our relative aloneness.
If you participated in the workshop, please feel free to share what you wrote below in the comments below. Remember this is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
These writings will give you a taste of what can be created in just 5 minutes, and how we share in these groups.
We’re running an online Narrative Medicine workshop series, starting on Monday 4th May 2020, to continue the work of close reading and creative writing that builds essential skills for humane health care.
People that attend our courses are health professionals approaching their work from a curious and creative angle, and understand that stories are a fundamental component of evidence-based care.
This course is run asynchronously, studying a text and writing together over a week, rather than the one hour we spent in “real time” in the Zoom call.
Find out more at narrativerx.com and join our facebook group to join our next group discussion.
SOMETIMES
- David Whyte
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
