Invictus
I don’t think I usually appreciate poetry as much as it is meant to be appreciated. My main emotional response to it is mild awkwardness and guilt about my shortcomings as a poetry appreciator. But one poem I really like is Invictus. I realize this is one of the least original poems to like, but whose idea was it to like original things anyway?
The main reason I like Invictus is that it is psychoactive, and I like the thing it does to my mind. If I had to guess what that was, I’d say that if my mind starts out as some sort of urgent whirlwind of unhappiness and wrongness—which it does occasionally—then saying the poem to myself stills that, and replaces my whole ontology of feelings and suffering with one of decisions and actions. And being in this ‘doing mode’ rather than ‘feeling mode’ is way better.
Which is presumably partly because the relevant feelings were bad. But I think the most important part is that it feels powerful, to believe I can stand my ground and make my decisions unmoved by arbitrary amounts of suffering. The world of feelings can seem out of control—like I am under attack by something outside of me, and may not be able to hold out against it. But if I can be a maker of choices, and suffering is not relevant to my choices, then I am safe from being forced to do things I don’t want to do.
Possibly the most useful thing a therapist ever suggested to me was that when I’m too anxious I should say to myself ‘I can be anxious and still be in control’. That has a similar mental effect, but Invictus is like a much longer elaboration on that theme. I didn’t realize until then that I was especially scared of losing control in such situations, but I do find it reassuring to think that I probably won’t. And I have observed that it is at least mostly true–I can be at least pretty anxious and not lose control.
(In general I feel like there are ‘feeling modes’ and ‘doing modes’, and it is somewhat hard to focus on both at the same time. For instance, setting up a party involves doing mode, and enjoying the party involves feeling mode, and I really don’t want to do them at once. I have no idea if this applies to other people, and haven’t worked out the details at all. Curious if this rings true for others.)
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.