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About 10 years ago, I was introduced to a collection of essays by poet & author David Whyte, titled Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, while hearing him read a few of them during an NPR interview. I found his perspectives so refreshing and beautiful that I based the entirety of my duet collection Songs of the Human Spirit around 15 of his essays. More recently, I picked up a book of his poetry that he wrote 11 years before Consolations, which is titled “Everything is Waiting for You,” taken from one of the poems in the collection.
Forever tackling the challenging conversations around what makes us human, Whyte delves into the subject of loneliness with this poem. He starts the poem pointedly by writing, "Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone." As the poem progresses, it feels lighter and more uplifting, ending with "Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you."
– NHD
