Today’s post is a little different than the usual. I did want to take a moment and celebrate the beauty of poetry from Mary Oliver.
There are certain things I have learnt from her that I would also like to share with you.
She definitely deserves a post of her own. I hope you will agree with me at the end of this post.
Learning #1 : You do not have to be good & Life is imagination. You give to take.
Learning #2 : When you are surrounded by highest of emotions, just give into it. Always doing the right thing is boring.
This reminded me of this “Mistake” conversation from my beloved series HIMYM.
Learning #3 : Beauty is in the minor details of life. Take more of it in. Do not search for it far away.
Learning #4 : Burn things. Every additional thing you bought will be a shackle for you.
Learning #5 : Just in case you will not have the chance again, say thank you.
Learning #6 : "Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it." - Ray Bradbury
Learning #7 : Emptiness in our pursuits is universal. Try to worry less about where you will end up. Try to give up your imagined worries.
Learning #8 : Some questions are not meant to be answered. We have to out-live them. Be micro-ambitious. Do not try to find one-solution-to-rule-all-existential-crisis.
Lesson #9 : You have to let go sometimes even it it hurts. Everything has to change, everything must go.
In Blackwater Woods
Lesson #10 : Only you can save yourself. True change and progress come from within.
Lesson #11 : Life is singular. Be a bride to amazement till you die. Not going forward means going backwards. Create your art and take the life head-on.
Lesson #12 : Do not forget to treat yourself a shinrin-yoku. Spending time in nature is your number one weapon.
Lesson #13 : There is a deeper connection between the fisherman and the fish, their encounter is a fleeting but meaningful moment in the larger scheme of things. Even the most seemingly insignificant beings can possess a kind of quiet majesty that is worthy of our attention and admiration.
Lesson #14 : You do not have to believe in something to pray. Prayer is a fundamental aspect of our spiritual lives, a way of finding meaning and purpose in our existence. Try some.
Lesson #15 : My favorite poem of her. Lessons are highlighted and italicized in the poem. Slowly guys.
DOGFISH Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, with a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails. And you know what a smile means, don’t you? * I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while. * It was evening, and no longer summer. Three small fish, I don’t know what they were, huddled in the highest ripples as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body one gesture, one black sleeve that could fit easily around the bodies of three small fish. * Also I wanted to be able to love. And we all know how that one goes, don’t we? Slowly * the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water. * You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun. And anyway it’s the same old story – – – a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive. Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason. And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world. * And look! look! look! I think those little fish better wake up and dash themselves away from the hopeless future that is bulging toward them. * And probably, if they don’t waste time looking for an easier world, they can do it.
Lesson #16 : Grab the moments with your full attention. No point in agonizing about losing someone or havin to part ways. Life is change. Live fully once you are lucky, accept the change gracefully.
Snow Geese (full poem)
Lesson #17 : Here is a different perspective while looking at what has happened to you: "Every experience, whether joyful or painful, has the potential to teach us something valuable, and that even the most challenging experiences can ultimately be a gift in disguise.
THE USES OF SORROW
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Lesson #18 : You will get your share of loneliness but only thing we know about this life for sure is: It goes on.
Lesson #19 : If God exists, he is everywhere and everything.
AT THE RIVER CLARION
Lesson #20 : The most important thing you can give is your attention. Attention is everything. Pay it to things wisely.
Lesson #21 : You have to employ the power of memory and imagination to have more gratitude in your life. Somethings are gifted only once. They can be re-imagined with gratitude every time you ask for.
THE PLACE I WANT TO GET BACK TO The place I want to get back to is where in the pinewoods in the moments between the darkness and first light two deer came walking down the hill and when they saw me they said to each other, okay, this one is okay, let’s see who she is and why she is sitting on the ground like that, so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream, but, anyway, harmless; and so they came on their slender legs and gazed upon me not unlike the way I go out to the dunes and look and look and look into the faces of the flowers; and then one of them leaned forward and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life bring to me that could exceed that brief moment? For twenty years I have gone every day to the same woods, not waiting, exactly, just lingering. Such gifts, bestowed, can’t be repeated. If you want to talk about this come to visit. I live in the house near the corner, which I have named Gratitude.
Here is a great podcast with her: