Besieged

Howard Pyle

BESIEGED

…Besieged as we are, little wonder that men and women alternate between the dream of a place apart, untouched by the world and then wanting to be wanted again in that aloneness….

Creating a state of aloneness in the besieged everyday may be one of the bravest things individual men and women can do for themselves. Nel mezzo, in the midst of everything, as Dante said, to be besieged — but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand — in the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or forces laying siege, but as if for the first time, as participants in the drama, both familiar and strangely surprising. We find that having people knock on our door is as a much a privilege as it is a burden; that being seen, being recognized and being wanted by the world and having a place in which to receive everyone and everything, is infinitely preferable to its opposite.

— David Whyte

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…. I was certainly saved — and I think others were as well — by being able to look at people walking among us, living with us and loving us, with the same patience and dedication as I looked at characters in scripts….

— Sidney Lumet

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I poison myself in various ways, and I care too much what people think of my…