What We Choose to Fight

Rilke's "The Man Watching" for our times

This is one of my favorite poems. Ever.  There is a long story about this poem, and how it changed my life, which I may share at another time. But I share this poem today because I think it’s the most radical teaching for our times. Maybe you will, too.

The Man Watching, by Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after 
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes 
that a storm is coming, 
and I hear the far-off fields say things 
I can't bear without a friend, 
I can't love without a sister. 

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on  
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age: 
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,  
is seriousness and weight and eternity. 

What we choose to fight is so tiny!  
What fights with us is so great.  
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,  
we would become strong too, and not need names. 

When we win it's with small things,  
and the triumph itself makes us small.  
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.  
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: 
when the wrestlers' sinews  
grew long like metal strings,  
he felt them under his fingers  
like chords of deep music. 

Whoever was beaten by this Angel  
(who often simply declined the fight)  
went away proud and strengthened 
and great from that harsh hand,  
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.  
Winning does not tempt that man.  
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,  
by constantly greater beings.

                --Translated by Robert Bly 

---

The storm is coming. The trees are beating on our “worried windowpanes.” We hear the far-off fields (or the internet, the news, or our intuition) say things we cannot bear without a friend: Climate change, political upheaval, war, poverty, oppression, lack of trust in our institutions, the loss of truth. In plain English, this is a shit storm. And it’s real. We all feel it, whether or not we admit it, and for many, it’s terrifying. How will we survive this?

As Rilke says, this is a storm for eternity. It’s serious. We – most of the people alive right now – have never lived through anything like this. We don’t know what to do and we are flailing around like chickens: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Some of us are in full battle-gear, pulling out our big weapons. Some are desperately trying to build bunkers. Others have their heads stuck in the sand, pretending that everything is perfectly fine.

I don’t mean to be hyperbolic or alarmist, but it is entirely possible that we will not survive this storm.

One thing is certain. We are fighting the wrong things. We are fighting against the small stuff. We are holding fast to our small identities, clinging to our possessions or trying to get more, battling each other with our opinions, building our own egos, and trying to make the world conform to our ideas for our own protection. Is it working? I don’t think so.

Fighting the small stuff creates this storm. Can’t we see that?

Rilke tells us that there is a bigger fight that isn’t a fight at all. It’s a surrender to something greater than ourselves. The Angel, who doesn’t even want to fight, asks us to put down our weapons. Put down our hate. Put down our need to defend ourselves and our ideas. Put down our egos and fear and greed and righteousness. We need to recognize that we will not win by fighting small battles against each other. Fighting the small stuff creates this storm. Can’t we see that?

In the Bible, Jacob has everything - material wealth, position, power – but schemes, lies, cheats and fights to steal the blessing and get more for himself, yet he fears losing it all. He is caught in his ego and out of Integrity with himself. One night, the Angel shows up, and Jacob fights with him in the dark until dawn, refusing to give in until he receives a blessing. The Angel, knowing that Jacob will only give up if he is wounded, dislocates his hip. He gives Jacob the blessing and renames him Israel, or “He Who Wrestles with God,” but not because he won. It’s because he was defeated by something bigger than his own ego and fear and schemes. With a wounded hip/pride, Jacob learns humility, and that his own strength is no match for God’s.

We must wrestle, as Jacob did with the Angel, but the real fight is with ourselves, not with others. In Genesis, the Angel is referred to as both God and a Man. In other words, ourselves - our human nature and our Divinity Within. We will always wrestle with the duality, but we can learn to recognize that one is ultimately stronger. Just as Jacob did.

But we don’t have to wait until we are wounded and crippled by our pride. If we just let ourselves be defeated, if we let go of the small stuff, we win. That’s the paradox Rilke is pointing to: we only win by surrendering our egoic needs, our pride, and by allowing ourselves to be dominated by our higher natures, not our petty ones.

I am unapologetic about my own understanding that there is something “extraordinary and eternal that does not want to be bent by us.” That cannot be bent by us. I am not talking about some kind of winged Angel or external deity, but our own Divinity. Our own God-ness. That spark of light inside each and every one of us that is connected to the greater Source of All, that knows peace and goodness and joy.

If we surrender to that Divinity Within, it will change our shape. We will stop this fighting with the small things. We will become strong and not need the names – the small identities, the divisions of opinion -- that separate us. Allowing ourselves to be kneaded and transformed by that which is greater than us is the way we all win before we are all too wounded to continue.

We need to tap out of the fight. Maybe, if enough of us do, we might stop this storm.