The File Cabinet
| “This is what you shall do; love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any person or number of persons, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.“ -Walt Whitman |
I have a large black filing cabinet next to my desk in my office. Even though more and more of my files are electronic, I’m still finding good use for my traditional four drawer metal storage unit. One of its best features is its ability to attract magnets. Like most refrigerators in our kitchens, my filing cabinet has become an inadvertent display case for anything that will stick to it. One of my favorites is the “Quotable Magnet” series that features poetry and quotations from famous personalities. The Walt Whitman quote in today’s column is one such example. Whitman packs in a lifetime of sound advice into just one magnet.
As summer is approaching, the earth and the sun and the animals are inviting us to join them in feeling the energies of the season. It’s not enough to just think about it or look out the window at it; we must feel the very aliveness of our own body, mind and our being. And when we start to sense that wonder in our selves we begin to notice it everywhere. Whitman says that the motion of our own body in this amazing world is an expression of poetry at its best. And we aren’t the only person walking around as a poem – everyone is. The next time you smile at someone in the checkout line at the supermarket sense the unspoken poetry of the moment. Perhaps they’ll even smile back at you. (Of course this was written pre-COVID so it’s harder to tell if someone is smiling under their mask…) Go ahead and smile anyway!
Smiling at life,
Dave