Poetic Practice and Risk
Our daily living is a continual poetic engagement with experience. We only know personally what we experience and the power of cognitive learning is quite weak. Shifting some brain-centred concept is not how learning works. A change in cognition or idea unless enacted in Mind and ‘being’ remains simply as data.
We had an interesting conversation with our adult children (all 36-42 years of age) this week about what they had learned in recent years. It came up in discussion the many treasures of advice given in their 20’s that were not enacted often to do with relationships and ‘choices’. How difficult it is to transfer wisdom? It seems wisdom cannot be ‘taught’, it can only be ‘caught’. And in the world of risk and safety, there is so little discussion on the nature of wisdom in tackling risk (https://safetyrisk.net/wisdom-based-safety/ ). What a shame this immature industry that only talks about numbers and frames its own blindness by metrics. Zero vision indeed.
Wisdom often comes with time, suffering and experience, what we sometimes refer to as ‘the hard lessons of life’. Learning is existential.
In time and with wisdom we learn that there is nothing more important in life than love and trust. Wisdom teaches us that that short term-measurable goals are short-term seductions but that don’t last (https://safetyrisk.net/goals-and-vision-in-safety/). Unfortunately, these kinds of lessons come with much hurt, pain and injury.
With wisdom comes vision, the ability to see things longitudinally as if persons matter.
As my children are in their 40s or approaching 40, they now contemplate very different questions about life that a 20 year old simply doesn’t consider. However, the decisions made at 20 have a profound affect on how one lives at 40. You can’t inject wisdom like a vaccine, wisdom is learned not taught. When Life/Wisdom is the teacher, learning is existential.
When we experience life’s hurts, pains and ‘lessons’ we always turn to Poetics for comfort and wisdom. There’s no science class possible to help when things go wrong. There’s no mathematical formula that helps tackle fallibility. When we experience life’s hurts we find help in a song, a conversation, a tune, a story, a prayer and a hug. This is where we find resilience in the human non-measurables that Safety never speaks about. This is where we find wisdom that offers no ‘fixes’ but knows how to listen.
Bernard Corden says
It’s almost May Day and I could not resist this from Billy Bragg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAw0Ri4FSdM
Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We’ll live together or we’ll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We’ve but one Earth on which to live
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields
We stand unbowed before their armour
We defy their guns and shields
When we fight, provoked by their aggression
Let us be inspired by like and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race