Remarkable Leaders Series – David Whyte in Toronto

Leadership visionary and poet David Whyte is coming to Toronto for an intimate two day conversation with leaders exploring “the three marriages”. David’s new book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, is a meditation on commitment. What does it mean for us to commit to our vocation, to our true selves, and to those we are in relationship with? Rather than view these three commitments as being in competition, David’s book explores how each commitment nourishes the others; how each commitment is, in fact, essential. He intersperses anecdotes from Dante, Rilke, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pema Chödrön, his own life, and the stories of others to explore how different people in different times and places have met their various marriages, sometimes head on, and sometimes by running away.

So many of the sentences in this book are beautifully crafted, full of truth, and gently humorous. A few of the sentences that caught my attention:

On marriage with the self:

Sometimes the best thing to do is to hold a kind of silent vigil beside the part of us that is going through the depths of a difficult transformation. (p.310)

On marriage to a partner:

To find out our partners’ desires, we must sustain a conversation with them that helps to bring those wants and desires to light. Sometimes we have to do this even when they are afraid of discovering them themselves. The deep, abiding fear is that we will stumble across the desire in them that wants a life different from the one we are capable of giving them. Essentially, we are afraid that they may find that their desire is to love something or even someone else… The crux then, the most difficult ground in the relationship, the portion of a relationship that elevates it to the level of a religious discipline or practice, is that I must “love,” must see the very part of my partner that could take this person away from me. I must keep contact with the part of the person that is pulling him or her into the future, though I risk not participating in that horizon. (p. 251)

On taking the next step, and not clinging to where we are:

People who are serious about pursuing their vocation look for purchase, not for a map of the future or a guided way up the cliff. They try not to cling too closely to what seems to bar their way, but look for where the present point of contact actually resides. No matter what it looks like.

The point of contact is what allows us to take the next step. Sometimes the point of contact is through the next necessary small task completed; sometimes it is through understanding the depth of our exile, the disenchantment experienced in the here and now, the impossibility of it all. Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. (p.131)

I’ll be attending David’s program in Toronto October 29 and 30. If you’d like to join us, there are just a few spots left.