People often share Walt Whitman’s maxim, “I am large, I contain multitudes,” and I can understand why. The pithy line is so satisfying, and explains so much about ourselves. It gives us permission to be varied and complex, to be imperfect and inconsistent. It’s freeing.  

The quote is from Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself,” which begins:

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

Walt Whitman was a poet who experienced deeply and viscerally the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. He saw God in every blade of grass and in every face, he saw that birth and death were as nothing, he loved himself because he loved life. And to Whitman, the beauty of life was contained in the vulgar and the sublime, the rotten and the arresting.

“As to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that

         does not offend me,

I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing...

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,

(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)”

Leaves of Grass, the poetry collection in which “Song of Myself” is included, was Whitman’s life’s work, his masterpiece. It’s the effect of a unique and wise creator expressing not only himself, but all he knew of the life force, and all he could never know: “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.”

“Song of myself” is over one thousand lines of wisdom, beauty, insight, and inspiration. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of Life; thought-provoking, life-affirming, and uplifting.

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”

(Thank you to Maia Duerr for inspiring me to write this Note.)