“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
These were the words by Mary Oliver that I repeated to myself as I hugged my head and rocked myself to ease on my first year dorm floor.
The transition into university was a brutal one for me. It seemed like all the hours in a day were not enough for me to get the ball rolling. The frenzy of lectures and content we had to learn on our own. Not knowing if the new friends you made were made to last or just picked up by a desperation particular to first year loneliness. Getting attention from guys but feeling a superficialness and flamboyance to it all which crawled on my skin. Trying to stay healthy and missing the people back at home. Everything I did felt fatally subpar to what I projected I needed to be, to even get by. So on a regular miserable November day, in a pathetic attempt to stop doom scrolling on Instagram, I started doom scrolling on Pinterest, and stumbled upon Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver.Â
“Tell me about despair, yours. And I’ll tell you mine.Â
Meanwhile the world goes on.Â
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again”
All of a sudden my body crumbled into a mud of softness. The stiff, ominous anxiety that couldn’t be pinned down nor described was suddenly all washed away as if it never stepped foot in my body. I didn’t have to be good. I could let the soft animal of my body love what she loves. And the world goes on.
It was a type of softness that didn’t take away the issues I actually had. There were still unwatched psych modules, and a room I haven’t cleaned yet. But for a brief moment, all that existed was me, Mary Oliver and the soon-to-be-bare trees standing in the distance, just visible from my large dorm window. I felt my beating heart, and how my body was probably digesting the sushi from lunch without my conscious control. I thanked Anatomy & Physiology for allowing me to visualize all that. And look, the geese are flying home again. They did that last year but they’re doing it again. It’s all hard work but they persist through it, year by year. They nimble and waddle on the green grass just to burn the fat right off on their long winter journey. In that split second, the unmooring perpetual cycle of trying and never being adequate quivered just faintly enough for me to see the deception of it.
I take a deep breath.Â
“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.”
A small, Mary-Oliver-shaped space, took root in my heart ever since. Her words, laced with pixie dust of some sort, cleanses my mind whenever I feel it starting to rot again. And as horrible as the winter of first year went, spring came and so did summer, and now it’s November again. The gritty depths of the school year drag me down, and I miss the sun, but I’m doing so much better. It’s all hard work, but I want to be here. The quality of being soft and breathable during such tumultuous times, personally and worldwide, are immeasurable.Â
So next time, when you feel the world closing in on you, or the insane ego crush of unrequited love, or maybe your first really bad grade in university, take a deep breath. Because the world still offers itself to your imagination. The world, with its harshness and excitement.
May a Mary-Oliver-shaped space bloom in your heart as well, as you prepare for the winter and wonders ahead.