The Foolishness Within

The poet David Whyte has a few lines in one of his poems that I can’t stop thinking about: “The part of you / you thought was foolish / the wisest voice of all.”

These lines have stuck with me because I’m realizing I’m more focused on building trust between people than within myself. I spend so much of my time trying to build a high-trust team and culture at Uncharted, and I spend nearly no time at all intentionally investing in a high-trust inner relationship with myself.

When I am weary or busy or thinking that I must be in constant service to those around me, that inner whisper is seen as foolishness. But when I give myself just a few extra minutes to clutch my coffee in the morning, when I fold my laundry without a podcast humming along at 1.2x speed, when I drive below the speed limit with the radio off, foolishness can become wisdom.

I’ve been wondering if I’ve lost some of my confidence recently...if somehow I see that inner voice as more foolish than wise, but I actually think what’s happening is I’m not giving myself enough time. Maybe when we think we’ve lost our confidence, what we’ve actually lost is the time to listen to ourselves.