Wild Geese & Loving Yourself

India: Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver.

Michael:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. (Wind) (Hopeful instrumental music plays.)

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. (Baby and woman laugh)

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, (Storm)

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers. (River)

Meanwhile the wild geese (geese call), high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese (geese call), harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

(high pitched note rises...fades)

India: That was Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.” (Solemn instrumental music plays.) I, like many people, have often found myself saying, “I’m sorry”: I’m sorry (x3) for things I can’t change—I’m sorry (x3) for things that don’t matter—I’m sorry (x3) when you don’t need me to be.

This poem addresses two divisions: That between yourself and others, and that between yourself and nature.

As Mary Oliver says,

Mary Oliver: You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

India: Rather,

Mary Oliver: You only have to let the soft animal of your body / Love what it loves.

India: (Chuckles) Which I wish I could go back in time and tell my
younger self, struggling to understand why I loved my best friend in an
all-girls school. But I only found this poem this year, in a New York
Times article about a mother who couldn’t communicate with her teenage
daughter, so slipped poems in the soles of her shoes.

There is a crowd of people in your head. (Crowd talking, grows)
Years’ worth of people telling you what to do, what to like, how to
appear. Salespeople, family, friends, lovers. You have to kick them out.
Tell them, “It’s my house!” (Quiet falls) “And I have nothing to be sorry about.

And then the other half of the poem. We cannot forget that we are part of this world. (Rain forest sounds, from clicks and wind to birdcalls)
Nature helps you remember who you are. Hiking a mountain, gazing at
stars—being close to nature can erase pretenses and constrictions. When
you see yourself as another aspect of nature, you can become fearless.
Non one tells a mountain to fit in, or finds a constellation a waste of
space.

This summer, after a semester in London, I was lucky enough to go around Europe. (Train wheels throughout) I went alone. I chopped my hair off (Hair cutting),
brought one pair of shoes, and generally thought more about what I
would see than how I’d be seen. When I got lost, I owed no one an
apology. Without English, I wasn’t concerned with what other people
said. I focused on creating a good life for myself, more than I usually
do. And when I got tired of the cities, I gloried in the landscape. (Train wheels end.)

I was sick in Ireland, but when I climbed a mountain in the sun only for a snowstorm to whirl up (wind)—I was happy. A week later, I put my feet in the waves of Marseille. (Ocean)
I wrote in my journal, “I could never truly despair of life in the
world when the sea exists, and somewhere is the perfect temperature with
the wind blowing, and a softie is feeding the birds.” (Solemn music resumes.)

Mary Oliver: Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / The world offers itself to your imagination.

India: I am a writer, and a photographer. (Shutter click)
(Scribbling pen on paper) I observe, observe, observe. And sometimes I
create. I trade despairs. I am a part of the family of things. Mary
Oliver’s poem is about self-love. I asked my friend, who read the poem
for us, what that means to him.

Michael: Every struggle that you encounter, every problem you face,
every problem that you create for yourself, is instead a part of the
development of you and your livelihood. Loving yourself is realizing how
beautiful that is! No matter what the world or hostile sects of it may
tell you.

India: So remember. (Piano with electronic rhythm plays.)
You are small. Your flaws are not craters. You are a work of art. And
you are an artist. You are a creation, and a creator. You are a detail,
and a god. Without you the spiders on the porch wouldn’t be the same,
the Mediterranean sea would not be the same.

Thank you for listening.

(Outro music swells, then fades.)