Selving: Let mystery remain

Hello friends, The act of selving is poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ idea of (and invented word for) the crucial human act of becoming one’s self. There is a whimsical image drawn by Hopkins at the age of twenty of himself looking into the water of a lake, about what sort of older man he saw in its depths. Eighteen years later Hopkins found a kind of resolution in the opening verse of “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.” It has a ring of eastern thought to it: “what I do is me.” The image above is the young Hopkins’ own drawing.

 

The poem below begins with that idea, and carries out the selving theme that my brother George and I came to realize over the decades. We are brothers yet we found our true selves on different paths. My career and work are the public person, but it is the result of personal relationships and private struggles. Is there a resolution for me, as there was for Hopkins? Into my nineties I find my self an often fatigued but still lively traveler.

 

Selving

“Each mortal thing does one and the same,
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells:
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying “What I do is me: for this I came . . . ”
– “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” G.M. Hopkins

Hopkins is right and not quite so.
My only brother, George, who died this Spring,
was a staunch conservative in politics and economics.

He and I shared parents, schools, and church,
but I became liberal and offered argument,
even ill feelings, in earlier times.

We grew more peaceable with age
as our inner selves struggled with fears
for personal, family, and worldwide wounds.

As ignored but truer selves emerged,
we became at ease with a suppressed selving
beyond the goals that others urged.

Selving is complex in our distracted lives,
when we follow false but alluring paths
that encourage disappointing outcomes.

Better to shape our receptacle in humility,
but not fill it too quickly with corrupt ideals
so genuine emptiness can deposit its gifts.

At the end, George and I became agnostic
each in our own true ways. Let mystery remain.