Alexandersmap

    Tag: Mary Oliver

    • To Be On Our Way

      In the deep fall
      don’t you imagine the leaves think how
      comfortable it will be to touch
      the earth instead of the
      nothingness of air and the endless
      freshets of wind? And don’t you think
      the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
      warm caves, begin to think
      of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
      inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
      the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
      the everlasting being crowned with the first
      tuffets of snow? The pond
      vanishes, and the white field over which
      the fox runs so quickly brings out
      its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
      bellows. And at evening especially,
      the piled firewood shifts a little,
      longing to be on its way.
      — Mary Oliver, Song for Autumn

      Autumn whispers to us through trees. For trees, naturally rooted to place, learn a thing or two in their seasons. Whole communities once thrived in places where only trees stand today. Old stone walls and cellar holes, old road beds and grooves in stone that once served as a simple mill. These things become more apparent when we act like trees and linger awhile.

      Humans aren’t rooted to a place, not really, we’re too prone to wandering. In this way, we’re more like the leaves, sailing off to find our place in the wind, eventually landing and becoming a part of the place we settle into in our time. If leaves become loam and feed the forest, don’t we too feed the future in our service to others?

      But there’s a restlessness in many of us. Perhaps remembering our time as leaves and longing to fly once again, a fire burns inside. Our fire, when fully expressed, may transform and carry us to places we couldn’t imagine before we fed the spark. Feed the fire, autumn whispers.

      Surely, ash returns to earth just as leaves do. But how far might it soar before it turns back towards the earth? We live in days, but ought to think in seasons. Everything has its time. The earth awaits.

    • Doing, With Purpose

      “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

      “You seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive, and you will probably survive…. It’s the wrong question! The question is how to be useful.” — Peter Drucker to a young Jim Collins (via Nextbigideaclub.com)

      In September, Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is chock full of bait fish—millions of tiny fish trying to make a go of it in this world, as countless birds and bigger fish attempt to turn that bait fish’s purpose in life to be their breakfast. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on display, and offers lessons for those who witness it. Mostly, it’s a reminder to avoid being a bait fish. For us land-based creatures, the best way to avoid that is to live with purpose.

      We all dabble in those questions of purpose, the “Why are we here? questions. But isn’t that too big a place to start? Purpose is an impossibly big scope to answer with such a broad question. We ought to break it down into bite-sized questions that determine our unique value: “What do I do well? “How can I translate that into serving those who need this value the most?” and “What do I need to learn to become even more valuable for those I wish to serve?” are good starting places for building purpose into our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves why we’re doing something. It’s appropriate to wonder where our work is leading us. And we ought to do something with the answers when we arrive at them, for our opportunity to do useful things resides in a very brief window of time. Feeling the urgency of the moment and doing something with it begins with knowing what both that something and that it really are for us.

      When we leave our lives to chance, we sometimes stumble upon a meaningful life. But more often than not, we end up getting chewed up in the feeding frenzy of life. Purpose brings us higher up the food chain, where we might rise above mere existence to a more valuable destination.

      Which leads back to that question of questions, posed so well by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

    • Reach

      To understand many things you must reach
      out of your own condition.
      — Mary Oliver, Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

      There’s a place for nuance. There’s a place for understanding. And above all, there’s a place for meeting in the middle. This inclination to receptiveness runs counter to the toxic stagnation of self-centered.

      There is another virus spreading through the world—it’s a virus of the closed mind. We’ve become closed to new perspectives that might challenge our own. Too many sip the same flavor of Kool-Aid (blue, red, orange seem to be the only flavors at the moment in the U. S.). But a full life doesn’t fit neatly into such rigid choices, does it?

      Like a root-bound plant left too long in its pot, we must reach out of our own condition to grow to our potential.

    • Every Day Has Something

      Everything that was broken has
      forgotten its brokenness. I live
      now in a sky-house, through every
      window the sun. Also your presence.
      Our touching, our stories. Earthy
      and holy both. How can this be, but
      it is. Every day has something in
      it whose name is Forever.
      — Mary Oliver, Everything That Was Broken

      Nobody said life was supposed to be a happily ever after greatest hits package of days to remember. Yet even the most tedious, frustratingly mundane days offers a gift of timelessness. We only have this one, no matter how it goes, and ought to celebrate the smallest sparkle of light just as we celebrate the highlight reel moments that come along, however so infrequently.

      The artists, poets and some not-always-so-poetic blog writers share one thing in common; an appreciation for the moment at hand. For every day has something to offer, should we go looking for it. Every moment offers a gift of possibility. What will forever look like today?

    • Making Room

      Things!
      Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
      fire! More room in your heart for love,
      for the trees! For the birds who own
      nothing—the reason they can fly.
      — Mary Oliver, Storage

      We talk of downsizing. Simplifying. Getting rid of stuff that doesn’t matter in favor of that which matters very much: Elbow room for the body and soul.

      Leaving the anchor behind and setting course for adventure! Clearing the runway and lightening the load! Surely there’s liberation in releasing the weight of years of accumulation: stuff, beliefs and biases, people trying to hold you to what you once were.

      What do we cling to that is holding us back from soaring?

    • Turning Inward for Answers

      He went to Paris
      Looking for answers
      To questions that bothered him so
      — Jimmy Buffett, He Went to Paris

      “As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      And now I will tell you the truth.
      Everything in the world
      comes.
      At least, closer.
      And, cordially.
      — Mary Oliver, Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

      It struck me reading a book on Existentialism that it’s almost impossible to arrive at enlightenment and sagacity when life becomes relentlessly hectic. Try absorbing deep thoughts from another era when you’re exhausted and grabbing a few pages in between commitments and sleep. We’re all so damned busy that we don’t take the time to understand the universe, let alone ourselves. The maze might have a beginning and an end, but we get so caught up finding the cheese that we forget to figure out where we are.

      Busy never answers, busy avoids answers.

      As we stack experiences one atop the other, do we take the time to sort them into insight? We spend so much time focused on becoming and belonging that we short the time required to being. The quest for answers never really ends, but we can edge closer to that which resonates for us. It seems the benefit of aging is capturing the time that eluded us when we were younger to sit with deep thoughts, reflect on the universe and find ourself.

      The real question is, why do we wait so long to sift through the answers?

    • Emptying the Noise Bucket

      Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
      It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
      that I do not want it. Now I understand
      why the old poets of China went so far and high
      into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
      — Mary Oliver, The Old Poets of China

      We’re all busy, and compounding our generally hectic lives, the world wants our full attention. It throws attention-grabbing headlines, distressing developments, and plenty of opinion about all of it at us and wants us to join the maddening chorus. Surely these are troubling days that shouldn’t be ignored. And as citizens of the world we must pay attention and work to improve our general lot. But, like our mobile devices that long ago became an extension of our brains, we should never forget to recharge our batteries regularly.

      “To become empty is to become one with one with the divine—this is the Way.” — Aza Kenzo

      When our focus turns to the noise outside we don’t hear our inner voice. We lose our compass heading. We miss a beat. And in that lapse our best work—our purpose, suffers. We must empty the bucket of noise and fill the void with silence. Luckily, solitude is just a walk or a garden full of weeds away. Simply leave that phone behind, step away from the noise and listen to yourself for awhile. We don’t owe the world all of our time, no matter how much it insists upon it.

      “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

      The thing is, that bucket of noise is going to keep filling up, no matter how much we try to empty it. As Mozart structured his symphonies, we ought to structure the music of our own lives. The magic isn’t in the noise at all, but in the silence in between. If we wish for more magic in our lives, if we wish to compose something that transcends the chatter of everyday life, if we simply wish to reset our jittery compass, then we must empty the noise bucket and dance with the silence left behind.

    • Wanting Wild

      “I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It’s impossible not to remember wild and want it back.” — Mary Oliver, Green, Green is My Sister’s House

      If we’re lucky, we never really grow up, we just get a bit more creative with our diversions. I used to crave responsibility, now I try to build enough flexibility in my schedule to chase waterfalls. Intense curiosity about the world around us is the key. Life is a quest, after all, adulting be damned. What are we wild things to do but seek adventure where we might find it?

      “In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.” ― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

      Adventure is easier when you’re on the road. You see things all the time that stir your soul. It’s much harder when you’re working in an office or sheltered in place at home. If we don’t venture out into the world we’ll never find out what we’ve been missing. Charles Darwin found adventure on the other side of the world, Henry David Thoreau found it a short walk from his bed. Adventure isn’t about how far you go, it’s about getting out of your own shell. What is a shell but a prison of our own making?

      Wild is always stirring about inside of us. We must want it back in our lives enough to seek it. The world will always ask for everything we’ve got. We ought to be the wild thing that rebels against that and turns towards adventure instead.

    • To Feel, and Dream, and Go

      “Books and books and books—some five hundred volumes in all. Books of the sea and books of the land, some of them streaked with salt, collected with love and care over more than twenty-five years.
      Melville, Conrad, London, Stevenson; Gauguin and Loti and Rupert Brooke; Lubbock, Masefield, De Hartog—Slocum and Rockwell Kent; Trelawny and Cook and Bligh; Chapelle and Underhill—Nansen, Frobisher, Villiers and Scott and Louis Becke. Homer, Gerbault, and Tompkins. Hundreds more: all cast in a common mold—blessed with the genius that makes men feel, and dream, and go.
      And a special section of books that deal with the greatest frontier of all—the relationship between men: Marx and Whitman, Thoreau and Henry George, Victor Hugo, Thomas Paine and Jefferson. Lincoln and Emerson, Rousseau, Voltaire and Upton Sinclair, Shaw. Byron, Mark Twain, Roosevelt, Garrison, Jack London again and Shakespeare.”       — Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

      Well, there’s a traveler’s reading list for you. Hayden misses some he ought to have included, Beryl Markham comes to mind, but on the whole he’d built a library of transformation. And so must we. What carries your imagination to new places? What moves you?

      Hayden might have loved Mary Oliver poems. The Summer Day, in which she famously prods us to ask ourselves: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” was published just four years after Hayden passed away, so it’s not one he would have read. But they surely spoke the same language. The feelers, dreams and goers instinctively know when they encounter a kindred spirit.

      And what of us, friend? What are our libraries whispering? Our challenge is to do more than feel and dream. Our challenge is to go. Books stir the imagination and offer a map. It’s up to us to learn what our compass is telling us and chart a course. It’s up to us to weigh anchor and act on our dreams.

    • Consider Life an Adventure

      “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

      Admittedly, I’m tired writing this. Two weeks of travel and burning the candle at both ends and I’m worn out. But that’s why we dance with coffee, isn’t it? To press ahead just a bit further.

      The thing is, we’ve had a couple of years to reset. We all did the best we could under the circumstances. Getting back to whatever this normal is gives us a chance to stretch our imagination more. To find new adventures just around the corner, and to have the gumption to venture much farther. Not to fill our InstaGram feed or gain subscribers, but to shake loose of the cobwebs of the commonplace and experience the world.

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” — Henry David Thoreau

      Who ever looks back with pride on a moment when you decided to sleep in instead of dancing with adventure? We ought to consider life an adventure and do more with that notion. We ought to rise and seek more from our days, for we only have so many to work with. We’ve spent time with people on their deathbed who literally can’t go outside to see the stars, who are we to complain about stepping out into the world? Dance with the gift of freedom. Be part of something livelier.

      “Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?
      Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”       — Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

      We all have our shackles of responsibility and routine. We can bend our days to find adventure while still honoring our core responsibilities. And we should question our routines when they hold our rambunctious spirit in place. Consider, for a moment, that convenience is a shackle disguised as a mindset.