The Poetry Pharmacy: Do you suffer from... feelings of insecurity?
For 20 years, William Sieghart has cured the sad and the sick with poetry. Now he’ll do the same for you
CONDITION: inertia when alone ALSO SUITABLE FOR: inadequacy, feelings of · insecurity · self-recrimination
PRESCRIPTION: Love After Love by Derek Walcott
I see a lot of people in my Pharmacy sessions who tell me that they can’t do anything when they’re on their own. If they had a visitor, they could entertain: cook, buy food, be cheerful and welcoming. Yet somehow the motivation to do this for themselves is very hard to come by. Left alone, they don’t believe that they’re worth the effort. Similarly, I meet person after person who funnels all their energy into helping and caring for others, yet has no regard for their own wellbeing. It’s as if they saw themselves as the only people on earth not deserving of love and kindness. There’s a fundamental unfairness in this: a sense that people are wilfully selling themselves short.
It seems to me that a crucial objective of existence is to come to terms with oneself. Learning to like ourselves is something we all battle with, young and old. It’s a constant, permanent progression, and it’s never truly complete. But when you can look yourself in the eye and actually cherish yourself – when you can recognize who you are with all your faults, and be happy with that – then you’ll see that you are no less worthy of kindness than your friends and guests. You’ll be able to speak kindly and politely to yourself, no longer tearing yourself down as you might an enemy, but instead bolstering and encouraging yourself as you would anyone else.
We devote so much time to self-analysis in our modern lives, to wondering why we aren’t happy or whether other people see our flaws as plainly as we do. Many of us resort to pills and alcohol, and sometimes even less healthy habits, just to keep ourselves in some semblance of balance. Yet all most of us really need is to come to terms with who we are. Unfortunately, this is not an over-the-counter remedy. Fortunately, however, it is entirely within our grasp.
The Poetry Pharmacy | Prescriptions
Love after Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
From The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart (Particular, £12.99). Poem courtesy of Faber
