There’s a poem that I keep coming back to. You have those days, I imagine. The to-do list keeps getting longer the more you things you tick off. The calendar balloons to fill those gaps that you left just for yourself. Where the unplanned writes over the planned. When it just all seems like too much.
That’s when I seek out my guide star. My guide star poem is Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. I’ll share a link to it, as it just seems like infringement to share the poem here. http://gwenglish.blogspot.com/2014/04/poem-of-day-mary-olivers-wild-geese.html
The two opening lines reject the idea that you have to be good, or you need to repent.
The third line is truth: You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
That’s all I have to do – to-do list be damned.
She then speaks to the mutual sharing of despair. When you’re sensitive like me, the world seems so cruel. The sharing of what pains you, or what pains me, lessens the pain.
And then Mary Oliver turns to the meanwhile. Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the wild geese are heading home again.
And the last line:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
My mental addition after ‘no matter how lonely’, no matter how sad, no matter how depressed, no matter how glad, …announcing your place in the family of things.
Feather in the Wilderness 