Find a way to communicate or resonate your thoughts, feelings and behaviours: Poetry

April 10, 2022

Find a way to communicate or resonate your thoughts, feelings and behaviours: Poetry

Hey Champ,

Everyone has to find different ways to communicate what they are thinking, feeling and doing.

This sounds easy, but it depends on what you are trying to communicate. Personally, I find it really hard to communicate the visceral emotions that I feel, which in turn can cloud my judgement. This means that I often look to other forms of expression to help me.

Your mother on the other hand, is a very good communicator and you will be surrounded by her family - and trust me - they can talk! So, I'm sure you’ll pick up ways to communicate.

Sometimes however, communicating verbally is a really hard thing to do. As such, we have to find something that makes sense of our thoughts, feelings and emotions, for us.

I have already talked about the power of music and how this can help people express themselves. I’ll also talk about art (as I had the option of going to art school); but for todays blog, I’ll talk about the power of poetry.

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Not so long ago, me and a few friends who are all boxers, cage fighters or bare knuckle boxers, went to a poetry night together. It was insane to see so many people that are deemed by society to be tough, stupid men, reading poetry that they had written.

My friend (who is the British bare knuckle champion) wrote:

This is an amazing way of describing what poetry is and what it does for people. I find that poetry and lyrics (which I contend is a form of poetry) really helps people to express themselves.

Writing and drawing allows people to put what is in their heads into the physical world. How amazing is it, that we can take non-physical things (thoughts) and make them physical by drawing or writing them!

Poetry is a wonderful, emotive, often enlightening, way to connect your perceptions and feelings to the world. And so, I will embed some of my favourite poems below and I will describe to you why I love them so much and what they mean to me.

If - Rudyard Kipling

This poem changed my life. The poem is one, long sentence on how to be a man. However, you don’t have to be a man to understand the importance of following the advice. In some respects, this poem is a succinct and beautiful mini-version of this entire blog! It gives guidelines on how to live an honourable life.

‘If’ made me cry. I resonated with every word and the ‘rules’ Kipling offered his readers to live by. I have tried to embed them in my life as precepts.

This is what I take from the poem:

We need to keep a level head when everyone else is chaotic, blaming others; looking for excuses or doing stupid things like fighting needlessly or taking drugs. Life gets heated and someone needs to keep situations calm. However, you won’t always be able to do this - and that’s ok. For example, your mother would be level headed in some situations and vice versa. So, we balanced each other out and helped each other through the situation. We will help teach you how to do this.
Everyone else has thoughts, feelings and behaviours of their own. Kipling tells us to be patient with others because they are irrational, autonomous beings (my addition). There’s not much you can do to influence another person of these but it is very important to realise that the only person you will ever be able to control and predict is yourself.
Have some self-trust. This may come with age and experience. But you won’t trust your legs to begin with, but very soon you’ll be walking and you’ll trust your legs until they fade. It's the same with many aspects of life. Just remember, you have to make mistakes in order to begin to trust yourself - how else can you know you have definitely made the right decision. Alex Ferguson used to say that if he had even the slightest doubt about something, he wouldn’t do it; and that, I bet, came from experience.
Even if we are lied about, we should never become the liar or stirrer. He says that even if we are hated, we must not hate in return. To be honest, the only way to overcome hate is to love or think about the person compassionately.
We should not talk or portray ourselves in a way that isn’t true to our morals, values, spirituality. I think is very important. It is also something I’ve struggled with. I think this is because I have only ever let a minority of people know the most authentic version of me.
It's ok to dream, but don’t chase an unobtainable dream. If you want to be a millionaire, then work for it; if you want to be a rugby star - work for it. Make actions and plans, don’t just sit in your head dreaming of “what could be”. Make it happen.
Nothing lasts forever. One day you’ll be loved, successful, happy. The next, you may lose it all. Everything changes - this is the only constant in this universe. Therefore, don’t get too attached to things. Like I said in another article, everything in this life is borrowed
Don’t spread rumours and lies; don’t play games; don’t make others look worse than you. Kindness is free and people will love you for it. That said, we don’t always have to tell the truth as it is dangerous. For example, you wouldn’t tell a murderer where you friends were if you knew she was looking for them. Here, you would lie to save their lives. That’s fine. The point is that there are good times to lie.
The most important point for me (links to point 7). There will be a time when you have everything. There will also be a time when you lose it all. You have to have resilience if this happens and start again. I didn’t know my own strength until two things happened to me.

Firstly, I thought I was dying (to be explained below);

Secondly, I lost you, your mother and brother, my job, reputation, friends, family. How did I cope? I gave myself a few weeks where I cried and felt the most pain I have ever felt. Then, I woke up went boxing, lifted some weights and found a job. I told a few people what was happening, but some of my closest friends don’t have a clue.

10. Don’t waste time. Live life.

And once you’ve done all that, you’ll be a powerhouse of a person who is respected, lauded, trustworthy and self-confident.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas

A long time ago, I was ill and the Dr told me some bad news. I didn’t quite know what to do. I told my father and he grabbed my knee and said “its going to be alright”.

Then, one night whilst I was laying in the hospital bed, I text my boxing coach. I said “Paul, I’m going to die”. His reply was: “You are one of the toughest fighters I know, This is just another fight, one of you will win, so go down swinging”. I knew he was right.

That night, I turned over and read my Dylan Thomas Omnibus. I started to read the poem below.

I was not going to go gentle. So, hours after my operation, I got up and walked the length of the hospital. Within 11 weeks, I fought again. Between my father, Paul, and this poem, I found the motivation to fight the illness and any other adversity that now comes in my life.

The poem signifies that even when things are hard and seem like they are over - fight it. The ‘dying of the light’ doesn’t have to be an illness, it can be injustice, cruelty to animals, wanting to help others, building yourself up after your life has crumbled (as in the poem ‘If’). It doesn’t matter what your fight is or what you choose to dedicate yourself to. Just fight it or for it, with all your might.

Rage against the dying of the light.

Then, when you look back at what you did and how you did it, you will see that you couldn’t have given anything more - and therefore cannot regret it. You may also look back and see that you had everything, lost everything and then went and built a brand new, better way of being. In this case, you’ll live with the knowledge that you are not made of class, that you have a strong mind and that you can rebuild, recalibrate and go at the problem again.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

This poem is so full of imagery and metaphor, it's beautiful. Do you remember the post I did on choices? This poems says it all in just a few lines.

I love it because I tend to walk in the woods often and every time I do, I see two paths stemming from the same place, reminding me of this poem. The point of this metaphor in the poem is to explain to the reader/listener, that there will always be different roads you will need to choose to walk - and that, even with all the knowledge and experience in the world, you’ll never fully know what’s at the end of the path and how different things would have been.

The poem is very good at describing the fact that regardless of what path you go down, you won’t be able to turn around and choose the other path. Robert describes how the person in the poem looks for as much information as he possibly can before making his decision, but he will never know everything. I think the poem also links to the idea of having faith in everything you do - even love.

Another point I like is that the character chooses the path less travelled and realises that many people before him have also walked that path. This makes me think three things:

Whatever you are going through or choosing to do, someone else has already been there.
Every choice is both a beginning and ending and having to choose one path over another means that we will never know what it was like to walk the road we didn’t choose. I am a nostalgic person, so I reflect on things deeply. Everyday I wake up and wonder about the paths we choose.
That we have to make our own meaning in life to justify the decisions we made.

So, these are three of my favourite poems and what they mean to me. I hope you enjoyed your little introduction to poetry.

Some other poems to get you started are: