I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
by Mary Oliver
Close to this year’s Earth Day on the 22nd of April, this poem (part 3 of a longer poem you can find for example here) reads like a passionate love letter to being alive on this magnificent planet. What a wonder to be able to experience the gorgeousness of being alive! Pausing with it, I feel the preciousness and ‘unguaranteedness’ of my own life, like the great poet Keats who didn’t live beyond 25 – but also my deep care and concern for the larger picture of this invaluable planet, and it’s degree of health. There is so much to admire, to weep over…
I often wonder about the balance between those two – admiring and weeping. There have been times in my life I’ve done more of one or the other, and while despairing over what’s wrong with the world and the “broken record of broken records” obviously feels painful, the times of trying to blank out what happens beyond my immediate circle has its own precariousness and numbness to it. The question I am most interested in these days, is how I can be most alive and ‘useful’ – to speak with Lama Yeshe urging his students to be ‘joyful and useful human beings’. Which includes a continuous searching for where this balance is most conducive.
I find Joanna Macy a beautiful, living example of being useful and joyful and showing up with immense love without glossing over pain – and she powerfully speaks to that here, interwoven with poetry. So why not get started immediately…
PS. If you’d like to explore, together with others, how you can bring your compassion into action with practices inspired by Joanna Macy, there is a weekend coming up in Samye Ling to do just that!
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash