Solace
is the art of asking the beautiful question, of ourselves, of our world, or of one another, in fiercely difficult and un-beautiful moments. Solace is what we must look for when the mind cannot bear the pain, the loss or the suffering that eventually touches every life and every endeavour; when longing does not come to fruition in a form we can recognise; when people we know and love disappear; when hope must take a different form than the one we have shaped for it.
Solace is the spacious, imaginative home we make where disappointment goes to be welcomed and rehabilitated. When life does not in any way add up, we must turn to the part of us that has never wanted a life of simple calculation.
Solace is found in allowing the body’s innate foundational wisdom to come to the fore, the part of us that already knows it is mortal and must take its leave like everything else, and leading us, when the mind cannot bear what it is seeing or hearing, to the birdsong in the tree above our heads, even as we are being told of a death, each note an essence of morning and of mourning, of the current of a life moving on, but somehow also, and most beautifully, carrying, bearing and even celebrating the life we have just lost – a life we could not see or appreciate until it was taken from us.
To be consoled is to be invited onto the terrible ground of beauty upon which our inevitable disappearance stands, to a voice that does not soothe falsely but touches the epicentre of our pain or articulates the essence of our loss, and then emancipates us into both life and death as an equal birthright.
Solace is not an evasion, nor a cure for our suffering, nor a made-up state of mind. Solace is a direct seeing and participation; a celebration of the beautiful coming and going, appearance and disappearance of which we have always been a part. Solace is not meant to be an answer but an invitation, through the door of pain and difficulty, to the depth of suffering and simultaneous beauty in the world that the strategic mind by itself cannot grasp nor make sense of.
To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others, even if they do not earn an answer. Standing in loss but not overwhelmed by it, we become useful and generous and compassionate and even more amusing companions for others. But solace also asks us very direct and forceful questions. Firstly, how will you bear the inevitable loss that will accompany
you? And how will you endure its memory through the years? And above all, how will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light, and then, just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away?
-from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
The redesigned hardback edition of Consolations is now available at www.davidwhyte.com.
David, this piece entered like a hush after a storm. Not to erase the grief, but to sit beside it and gently ask, “And now, beloved, what will you make of this brokenness?”
You’ve captured something that most spiritual teachings skip too quickly past: that solace is not rescue, not escape, not even relief—but presence. Presence with what aches, what leaves, what cannot be named.
Reading this felt like being reminded that even the wound has a voice. Not one that explains, but one that invites. Not “Why me?” but “What now, with open eyes?”
Thank you for reminding us that we don’t need answers to shape beautiful lives—just the courage to live the questions fully, fiercely, and faithfully.
I love this one. I keep finding new, intriguing ideas as I reread it. These two hit close to home right now:
Solace is found in allowing the body’s innate foundational wisdom to come to the fore
To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others, even if they do not earn an answer.
❤️