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| 'Three Sisters,' Blue Mountains, Australia |
Will (noun) meaning purpose, determination, mind.
The phrase ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’ is
almost 400 years old. In 1640 the English writer, George Herbert, published a
selection of proverbs. One of these reads:
To
him that will, ways are not wanting.
The phrase has only slightly changed, but the sense is
the same. If one has a determination to get something done, then they will find
a way in which it can be done. It tells us that nothing can hold us back from
our objective. It is an incitement to never give up. It is a rallying
cry, advocating that, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’
Within the phrase, and those like it, lurks a desire
to control. A will is not simply a determination of the mind, it is a
determination to impose order on our own lives, or the lives of others or the
planet itself. It is unsurprising that Herbert coined this proverb in the
middle of the Scientific Revolution, a time when the world and cosmos were
being referred to increasingly in mechanistic terms.
Pursuing the idea a little further, we might conclude
that it is a determination to impose order on an otherwise wild place or
being.
Hmmm…
Wild
What of the word wild? Where does it come from?
What is it?
There seems to be two possibilities for the origin of
the word itself. One is that it derives from the Old German word wald,
meaning forest.
The other likelihood is that the word wild and
the word will are more closely linked than we might think. Wild may
be a shortened version of willed. The rationale for this is that a wild
place follows its own will. Hence it is self-willed, self-wild.
A Wild Way
Consequently, if we were to dismantle the phrase ‘Where
there’s a will there’s a way’ and replace it with ‘Where there’s a Will,
there’s a Wild Way’ we might more closely unite and understand the
connection between the two words – will and wild.
Coincidentally, with such an appreciation, we might
even reconnect with a part of ourselves that, in westernised cultures at least,
has largely been suppressed and hidden.
The eco-psychologist, Bill Plotkin, identifies four
facets of the self. One of these he calls the Wild Indigenous One.
This aspect of the self is, according to Plotkin, ‘is fully and passionately
at home in the human body and in the natural world… The Wild Indigenous One is
our most instinctual dimension, every bit as natural and at home on Earth as
any elk, elm, or alp.’1
When this wild way within us is re-discovered
and experienced then the control and dominance implied in the familiar phase of
where there’s a will there’s a way is seen for what it is: a
self-harming impediment to our full selves, and a disrespectful and
exploitative way of treating the earth.
Once we recognise that wilderness is not a
state of disorder, but rather a state in which order is not imposed, we are
able to find our natural wild state within the fullness of nature.
The American poet and writer, Wendell Berry, expressed
this insight beautifully in his short poem The Peace of Wild Things,
written in 1968.
When despair
for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives
may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great
heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still
water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
May we all use our will
and come into the peace of wild things.
Note:
1. Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human
Psyche, New World Library, Novato, California, 2013.
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