Recovering Your Spark...

When the pressures of expectation, betrayal, failure, or existential sadness make life feel meaningless - when your spark has gone - Shakespeare’s ultimate remedy is to look towards nature. Re-engaging with the natural world enables us to refocus, nourish our souls and enliven our hearts.

This situational and attitudinal change is very familiar to us Logotherapists & Existential Analysts. When we lose our spark, the defiant nature of the human spirit is muted; I wrote about that in my previous blog post, where I used another Shakespearean example from his play, Hamlet.

Here in As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1, Duke Senior reflects on how being stripped of his courtly status has forced him, or rather invited him, to enact an attitudinal change towards unalterable circumstances and to find renewed peace and wisdom by going into the forest.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it." As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1

In these few words we see a renewed vigour for life. Sometimes we need to lose in order to gain. That is perspective.....and Shakespeare's plays have it in spades!

Now all we must do is apply that wisdom to our own situations.

Have faith; the answer is both within and outwith you.