The COVID-19 epidemic has altered people's lives in different ways. For many, it has meant unprecedented physical suffering. For others, profound grief. For some, a loss of another sort—a promising job, a dream vacation, a graduation ceremony, or a vision of the future. For a lucky few, it’s meant new freedom and independence. But for nearly all of us, it’s meant more aloneness.

David Whyte speaks to that aloneness in this poem (from his collection Everything is Waiting for You) and cautions us again acting as though we are on our own. “To feel abandoned,” he says, “is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings,” and to miss the invitation offered us every day by the world around us: to ease into the conversation and rest in our belonging.

Everything is Waiting for You

by David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.