In Mary Oliver’s spectacular poem, The Summer Day, she asks,
“…What is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life.”
Of course, for some, life is more frightening than precious. But her evocation of such a spectacular day is so visceral and so truthful.
And maybe we’re all always trying to figure this out, in our own ways. It’s certainly a question as old as humanity, as old as self-reflecting awareness. What can or what must we do with our lives? Who or what are we? How can we or must we respond to a situation, to just waking up or going to work or school⎼ or to the threats that loom over all of us? Like the threat from those who are trying to impose a white nationalist dictatorship on all of us? The threat of the climate emergency, from wars, and who knows what else? Every moment the question of Who are we arises. We create ourselves through our answers to this question. And for most of us, our answers change.
Mary Oliver talks about attention, deep attention, as she rolls in the grass. As she feels herself as the grass or the creatures around her. And maybe this is one thing for all of us to do. We might let ourselves simply be with as much of what’s around us as feels right⎼ grass, trees, streams, and other living beings. This is one way to help save it, or them. To get us to care deeply enough to take action to save it, or us.
Did you hear that sound? The air disturbed by a moving car? The cough-talking of a raven? That peeper? That sparrow? That raven is cough talking not only the beauty of the day, but the grief it feels over the depleted air. Do you hear that sparrow? It’s not only calling its mate. It’s calling out in grief over the diminishing food resources it can find to feed its children.
I notice that when I regret something I did or didn’t do, maybe misunderstood something, or treated someone unfairly, and I might call myself names. Wonder how I could ever be so mistaken. And this hurts. I might imagine that mistake is frozen in time⎼ that I’m frozen in time, merely a memorial to a mistake. And that I can’t change or free myself from it. We might even try to blame someone or something else for what we’ve done so we no longer feel the pain.
Why do we do this? It’s such a weird way of thinking about ourselves and our lives, isn’t it? So distorted and inaccurate. If instead we listen deeply to this self-talk and imagining and go beyond it, not get stuck in it, so much might be revealed. Recognizing a mistake is the first step in correcting it. It can be a growth of awareness if we just listen mindfully and take it and our response as a lesson.
We might do the same anytime we look at ourselves. Freezing ourselves in place or thinking of ourselves as our labels and not a changing being is such a hurtful habit. If unacknowledged, it can destroy our ability and confidence to work to diminish the suffering in the world.
In a similar way, we might diminish ourselves by rushing here and there, or rushing for easy answers. This clamps our eyes shut and covers our ears. It inclines us toward seeing life as a movie starring the surface of things seen superficially. We might go through a moment so quickly we don’t notice the reality of how quickly we’re changing. And we get so dizzy rushing in place we yearn for stability instead. For known quantities, for memorials instead of living beings. For labels, for the definable instead of the indefinable.
Recognizing a mistake can be helpful. But freezing ourselves in it hurts. If we notice how our thinking hurts us in this one moment, we might notice it in other moments⎼ and free up our lives.
We can study the sound the label makes in our mouth and our mind as we speak it. The label can be like the grasshopper in Oliver’s poem, who:
“…is eating sugar out of my hand…
Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes…”
If we study the grasshopper as well as the poem, the attention brings it to life for us. The grasshopper might fling open its eyes. It might make one of those prodigious jumps a grasshopper makes.
If we haven’t already, we might benefit from reading the whole poem by Mary Oliver sometime or twice again.
If we let go of what freezes us, the ice melts. When we pay attention and take action to help change any situation for the greater benefit of all, the threats can dissolve.
When we study ourselves, who knows what we can create? Who knows what we’ll do with our one wild and precious life?
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