Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
The Stolen Child~WB Yeats
A truly masterful poem. Yeats wrote about the pain in this world and about fairies that would beguile a child away from the miseries of this life. Romantic, yes, yet a life without some suffering isn’t a life, in human terms at least and his gentle poem speaks volumes about hurt and longing. Mike Scott of the Waterboys paid tribute to Yeats quite hauntingly in his tender song the Stolen Child. Great songs have a way of helping us transcend our place in time and escape for a moment into another world, but we cannot survive on songs alone, although myth and song and tales can inspire us and help us cope with injury.
We too mustn’t solely shield the ones we love from harm, rather we must instruct them on how to face the many trials in their life bravely. Teach them to be brave, honorable, kind and wise as a means to handle battles. Our children? What of them? We must teach them well. The world is full of weeping, more than they can understand. Teach them how to endure, teach them how to fight back rather than choosing to escape by hiding the pain away in addictions, and hidden and closed compartments of their heart and mind. The warriors path sometimes requires us to fathom why we have bittersweet injuries, and to use that knowledge to appreciate better what it is we are fighting for. I’ve not much more to share tonight. Have peace in your heart, enjoy a gentle sounding song, love with all your might and be open to receiving love in order to fill yourself up when it comes time to battle.
Image of Navy SEAL Perry Yee wearing our Steppenwolf Shirt.