The Daffodils
by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
As we fast approach the darkest day of the year, on winter solstice, as well as the end of 2018, you and your clients might feel pulled by the “inward eye”, quietly guiding you deep into the realm of contemplation and introspection. As you arrive, you might feel yourselves dancing in the space of “in between”, back and forth, between memories from this past year and hopes and expectations for the new year to come. And so you turn and re-turn.
In poetry, the retrospective-prospective structure starts with a reflection of past occurrences and then turns to gaze and imagine the future or to look at the present moment with new eyes. You may look at life itself as a vessel for continuous poetic turns, visualizing the past and envisioning the future as a flow of interconnected processes.
Science seems to concur. A growing body of research suggests that memories are instrumental in visualizing the future. Psychologist Thomas Zentall puts it this way: “Being able to remember past events and being able to plan for the future go hand in hand”. Amnesia patients, for example, find it challenging to imagine the future. It appears disorganized and emotionless. Professor, of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Kathleen McDermott found that brain scans indicate that when individuals imagine potential future events it is the memory processing centers in the brain that get activated. Remembering the past and imagining similar events in the future ignite the same area in the brain. These MRI studies illustrate that past memories are retrieved and drawn upon when images are projected into the future. Like Wordsworth’s Daffodils.
What can you, and those seeking your help, take away from understanding that our past and our future, our memories and our visions, are intimately linked? Perhaps you come to better appreciate that that which has been exiled, displaced, and ignored in your past will continue to wrestle with you in the future. As the darkest day of the year comes near, you might want to contemplate, with gentle compassion, those disregarded and suppressed parts of the psyche that long to be witnessed, to be heard, and to be brought into the light of consciousness again.
Bring to mind the different facets of your life:
Contemplate the following:
“And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
~William Wordsworth