Finding Your Voice

Video Transcript

There’s this sense that, when you die, at least die feeling that you’ve done something. And I want to feel that I’ve done something…however trivial, however small, however superficial it may be…I want to feel I’ve done something.

I’m getting old, let’s be honest. And I thought well, if I don’t say something now, I never will.

My wife Chrissie was away for a week. When I dropped Chrissie at the airport she said to me, ‘Harry, don’t be angry, don’t be angry.’ And I thought well, I’m not angry. I thought she meant don’t be angry with me. And of course I wasn’t angry with her. But she said, ‘You are… you’re angry with the world.’ I thought, you know, she’s right, she’s right. I am angry with the world, as so many people at the moment seem to be.

The thing that makes me most angry is what I see happening to the world of nature, to the natural world. I suppose the anger comes from feeling that there’s not much you can do about it. You want to do something, you want to speak out. You want to be a voice for good. You want to make the world a better place.

I was angry because I felt trapped. I had something to say and I didn’t know how to say it. I had strong feelings that somehow were being forced back into me instead of finding an outlet. And anger, played inward, is a damaging thing.

I spent 35 years as a teacher of English. I suddenly thought I’d been pushed into a way of thinking. And it’s a corporate, a capitalist, a globalized world. And I didn’t like it. I thought that actually is not me now. And if I think about it, it never has been. But I didn’t feel able ever to recognize that before. And it was only when I retired from teaching and suddenly realized that my calling, if you want to call it that, is poetry.

The reason I write is because I have to…it’s like breathing; I have to do it. ‘Blessing’ is something that I just wrote down, almost like a little aphorism rather than as a poem. And it’s very short. But I’ll read it to you because I think it sums up how I feel about me but how I also feel about everybody else.

Blessing

Are you doing with your life what you want
to do, or what you think you ought to do?

Seeing the difference is wisdom.

Finding they’re the same is blessing.

And that’s all. If what we do, what our profession is, if you like, is fulfilling and instructive and helpful, I think that’s wonderful. But if you’re doing something only because you feel required to, because you have to make money, because you have to have a certain lifestyle, you have to have a certain way of behaving or reputation or status… things of that sort. Then I think it’s a little bit different. And too many people that I know or I have met in my life, seem to live their lives like that. Find out what life is for you and what fulfills you about the life you live. And rejoice in that, rejoice in that whenever it happens. And never give up the thought, if you haven’t found it yet, that it could still be, that you could still find it. It’s never, never too late.

This is the Mary Oliver poem called The Journey. And I happened upon it years and years ago in a bookshop in Manchester. This was an epiphany for me because I recognized in reading this poem that my life could change, perhaps already had changed.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

I get chills even now when I read it. It’s a lovely poem.

The phrase that I like in there that most chimes with me is ‘finding your own voice’. Finding that you have something to say and noticing that you say it in a particular way. And it’s yours, it’s yours, it’s you. That’s important. But there’s no point in just recognizing it. You have to follow it. You have to do it. That’s what this journey is about. It’s a journey that you only begin when you recognize that all the voices that have been shouting at you and demanding your attention actually should be subservient to your own voice. It’s not being selfish in having your own voice. It doesn’t mean that you dismiss everybody else. It certainly doesn’t mean that. But say what you have to say and hope that maybe, just maybe, what you have to say will encourage somebody else suddenly to find that they have a voice as well. And the more individual voices we have the more of a choir we have. And when we have a choir — like this morning, the birds, the morning chorus — it’s wonderful; it swells and it becomes something almost tangible. And that, for me, is what finding a voice is all about.

Looking back on your childhood is often a fraught thing. But it’s also sometimes a healthy thing because it can, if you want it to, inform something of what you’ve become. I did very, very badly in final exams at school for all sorts of reasons, most of them to do with home life. I felt dim, I felt slow, inadequate if you like. Why is it that we don’t bring our children up to believe that you may not pass your exams, you may not go to university, but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. You have talents, you have abilities, you have genius even. And I realized that late. I mean I have passed exams since that time, I’ve passed lots of exams. But I don’t measure myself by that. And I don’t wish to measure myself by that.

Epiphany

I used to believe I was dim — 
persuaded, in fact, quite sure.

But you know something? I’m not.

Never was.

Neither brainless nor convinced of it.

My foolishness was, and remains,
the wisdom of this time and place we share,
this generous earth, it’s warm breeze,
this tree aloe, this welcoming,
whispering intelligence
of bats and owls in the darkness.

No adornment here, no mere standing
upright side-by-side, but rather
a simple unity: we are one.

Madness groans elsewhere,
cawing and wheezing along
another pernicious freeway
of ambition, promotion, wealth,

towards its bleak, inexorable end.

Not me, though, no.
I’m not that stupid, not that dim.

Not now. Never was.

When I wrote this poem it was a kind of cleansing for me, a catharsis. And it’s something now I believe in, I’m glad it happened. A sudden realization that what you’ve been doing all your life was wrong. But the bright light is what opens the eyes, opens the heart.

I feel welcome here — it’s a strange sense. But I’m not surprised — you know I knew I would be. I don’t feel at home where the cars are rushing by or when I’m stuck in traffic or when there’s a lot of noise around me. That doesn’t make me feel at home. But this does. And I know some people would find this a little daunting because they’ve forgotten, if they ever knew, what the connection is. I’ll never forget. That bird is reminding me of the fact as well. Listen to it…The fact that it is whistling to me now and I am here to listen — that’s what matters. That’s presence. It’s Wendell Berry talking about coming into the presence of still water, the peace of wild things. That’s what this is.

John Lennon’s son, Julian, also a musician — one of his songs, whose title I can’t remember, but whose final line I can — has really moved me quite deeply. It finishes, ‘What will I think of me the day that I die?’ I find that echoing around in my head. What will I think of me the day that I die? And I hope that what I think of me when I die is going to be not that I regret having done things or regret not having done things, but that I’ll think I did my best, I did my best. And I said what needed to be said in the best way that I could. I try, and I think it’s a healthy thing to try, to do what you can, to say what you can. And not to not say something just because somebody else might disagree with it. I don’t mean rant, I don’t mean preach, I don’t mean lecture. I just mean say it. And let people know that this is where you stand. It’s where I stand. And this is something I value and I think we all should value.

I have a poem that I wrote for my grandson. And when he was born, I wrote a poem called ‘What I wish for you.’ I wrote it for Charlie, but of course it is a wish for all humanity. It’s a wish for all my grandchildren. And by extension, their children, their grandchildren. Everybody, everybody — it’s a wish for the world. I’ll read you a bit of that if that’s ok.

What I Wish for You

For you I choose the humblest things, 
immortal things, essential things (not things at all),
spurning screen-glare, lavish cars and fancy phones,
whatever bits of instant uselessness
define the world you’ll live in after this.
I wish you home, and family and friends.
And friends and friends and friends. True friends.

And then? The best, the very best: it’s always
yet to come. I wish for you the safest of clean worlds
with flora, fauna, peace and freedom as brethren,
where passion, gratitude and kindness sprout and grow
like thistles, where head and heart combine to spell
‘success’, where money’s fine but never, never all.
And most: your fullest vivid self, little one,
whatever may befall, in all that you can do or be.

For this is love, your birthright, and all the truth
you’ll ever need. So live long. Live full. Love deep.

Go well.