When did your heart first leap out of itself, wanting to reside in the body of they-who-had-just-walked-past? They were surely more you than your own self, yet without ungainly stoop, spot-free, gaze level rather than downcast, half smile rather than self-conscious frown.

With that leap, which can only be achieved by a kind of projection, the poetic aspect of ‘projection’ not explained by psychologists, a thread of what will pull you onward through life begins to spool out from the spinning crimson yarn cone of the heart. The leap can only occur while you do not yet know that the beloved object of your attention is likely as riddled as yourself with doubt, self-aggrandisement (or his sister self-abasement) and fears.

Later, this knowledge, which must come to us all to fully become adults, will be the cap stone on the gushing spring of youth. The stone itself need not be the final word on springing forth. It forces a necessary halt to looking to others for everything that we should become and asks us to commit to our own source, however meagre or chalky, so that we might in time learn how to build a font, a basin, or even a simple hand-dug little pool, to collect our waters and be of benefit to others, rather than just an annoying source of path erosion and cold feet. Staying capped, asserting that one is ‘self-made’1, self-contained and dry, (the goal of every spiritual miser who has ever lived), is nothing to be proud of. It is the tight-lipped grimace of the hoarders of the world’s resources. You know what it looks like, you see it daily on your screens.2

This podcast was first published here on Substack on March 26th 2026, with full transcript, footnotes, links, images and extras.

No AI was used to research, create or edit this piece, nor any of my art, books, music, writing or crafts.

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