When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast.
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
W.B. Yeats, (1865-1929) Irish poet.
Excerpted from the poem Dialogue of Self and Soul
“I love the poet W. B. Yates and he existed in a very difficult time for Ireland and we exist in a difficult time now for our country. I love this quote and I say it every day as a form of meditation. It invokes a timelessness and a sense that I am part of history and I am also going to be part of the future. I think if we can look past things that might be troubling us right now, not to disengage but to take the long view, then we can see that it’s our angle of vision, it’s the way we perceive the world. If I wake up and I hear something that’s very disturbing to me, I try to split the screen and balance that with something of great beauty that inspires me and makes me feel whole again. Maybe it’s my cats playing, maybe it’s hearing wolf howls, maybe it’s talking with a dear friend, maybe it’s seeing people I haven’t seen for a while and reconnecting. I think balance is everything and if we don’t balance our own lives how can we expect everything around us to be in balance? I meditate, I do things like yoga, I walk, I sing. I do all of these things to keep my soul in balance and that’s my responsibility.”
Brenda Peterson is a novelist,
nature writer and writing teacher.
She is the author of Wolf Nation:
The Life, Death and Return of Wild American Wolves
