We contain multitudes

"Walt Whitman." AZQuotes.com. Wind and Fly LTD, 2025. 24 August 2025. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/313844

I just googled “we contain multitudes” and found the quote (“we” corrected to “I”) is from a Walt Whitman poem (emphasis mine):

Song of Myself, 51
Walt Whitman

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

This line—”I contain multitudes”—keeps coming to my mind. I am intrigued by the contradictions of myself and others. There are so many people I admire, who I think of as heroes, yet nearly all of them have said or done things that are disappointing or worse, and seem out of character with their heroic deeds.

The Bible is full of examples: David, who lusted after Bathsheba and killed her husband, yet was the apple of God’s eye and part of Jesus’ lineage; Samson, blessed by God with superhuman strength, then conquered by his own weakness through the hands of Delilah; to name a couple. Many of our American forefathers practiced or condoned slavery. It is true they were men of their time, but still, there was an inconsistency in their treatment of other humans. Great men have been discovered to have been unfaithful to their wives. Even dastardly mob members seemed to demonstrate love and care for their wives and children. There have been people in my own life who I love and trust, yet they turn around and betray me or act in some way that does not fit with the expectations I have for them. And, of course, I need look no further than myself for my own contradictory actions of love counter-balanced by mean, hateful doings.

I wrote about Frank McCourt’s father in Angela’s Ashes. McCourt’s father drank all the family’s money and caused horrible suffering for his wife and children. Yet, McCourt wrote:

I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.

I feel sad over the bad thing but I can’t back away from him because the one in the morning is my real father and if I were in Amercia I could say, I love you, Dad… (p. 210, Angela’s Ashes. By Frank McCourt. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Copyright 1996 by Frank McCourt. August 2016).

And recently I saw this poem by Sherman Alexie:

River Broken

as a child, I saw
an Indian man throw
a bag of newborn
kittens into the river

I can still hear the splash

that same man
was one of the best
powwow fancydancers
on the reservation

I wish that I could
now deliver unto you
some kind of benediction
but all I know for sure

is that the world trembles
with contradictions

Oprah did a whole series on “What I know for sure,” and consistently asked interviewees, “What do you know for sure?” I like Sherman Alexie’s answer, “…all I know for sure / is that the world trembles / with contradictions.”

I’m sitting here thinking of how to end this reflection. I relate, again, to Alexie: “I wish that I could / now deliver unto you / some kind of benediction…” What comes to me is “Trust in the love of God.” It is true “the world trembles / with contradictions,” AND I know for sure, God loves me. He loves you. He loves us.

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Did you know there’s a Bob Dylan song called “I Contain Multitudes”? I like it!