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Living in a Poem
“I just came back from Japan a month ago, and in every classroom, I would just write on the board, “You are living in a poem.” And then I would write other things just relating to whatever we were doing in that class. But I found the students very intrigued by discussing that. “What do you mean, we’re living in a poem?” Or, “When? All the time, or just when someone talks about poetry?” And I’d say, “No, when you think, when you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another — that’s a poem.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, OnBeing
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You can learn feelings. Ancient people learned feelings through mythological stories. If we look at Greek history we find all the possible range of feelings, Zeus the power, Aphrodite the love, Athena the intelligence, Apollo the beauty, etc. There was all the phenomenology of human feelings. On the other hand, we learn them through literature, which is the place where we learn what pain, boredom, love, despair, suicide, passion, romance are. But if literature isn’t “attended” and books aren’t read, if the school falls apart then the feeling doesn’t form. And if culture doesn’t intervene, the kids remain at the impulse level or at the top of emotion.
