That difficult, delicate, triumphal pivot from self-limitation to self-liberation in the most vulnerable-making of human undertakings - love - is what poet and philosopher David Whyte, who thinks deeply about these questions of courage and love, maps out in his stunning poem “The Truelove,” found in his book The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love ( public library) and read here, by David’s kind assent to my invitation, in his sonorous Irish-tinted English voice, in his singular style of echoing lines to let them reverberate more richly: The more vulnerable-making the endeavor, the more reflexive the limitation and the more redemptive the liberation. Bruce Lee knew this when he admonished that “you will never get any more out of life than you expect,” James Baldwin knew it when he admonished that “you’ve got to tell the world how to treat you if the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble,” and Viktor Frankl embodied this in his impassioned insistence on saying “yes” to life. The stories we tell ourselves about what we are worthy or unworthy of - from the small luxuries of naps and watermelon to the grandest luxury of a passionate creative calling or a large and possible love - are the stories that shape our lives.

Few things limit us more profoundly than our own beliefs about what we deserve, and few things liberate us more powerfully than daring to broaden our locus of possibility and self-permission for happiness.

Download the truelove by david whyte