Wild Geese: Separation vs. Connection

Wild Geese
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 only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about 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,
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.
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.

© Mary Oliver.

You have probably heard this poem before…I first encountered it years ago.  Read it in books, encountered it (sometimes misquoted) at UU church services…perhaps it’s oft repeated, but worth repeating.  I come back to it again and again…it never fails to move me; sometimes to tears, depending on my mood.

There’s something very Buddhist, very Zen, about this poem.

Life’s not about being “good.”  It’s not about sinking into that sense of loneliness, despair, separation we all feel from time to time (in my case, quite often…especially this time of year). You just need to allow, to let be what is.  There’s this whole world out there, and you’re part of it!  A reminder of the connection we all share—to each other, and to everything.

I find I often have to remind myself of my place in, “the family of things.”  I had an odd place in my own family and never quite felt like I was a “real” member of my group of siblings (big age difference meaning I was raised by the same, yet different, parents) and sometimes think this carried over into the rest of my life.  I still sometimes feel like an outsider, even though I have a career, a family of my own…I have a great difficulty with joining groups, feeling like part of a sangha.  It’s, ironically, much easier for me to feel a strong sense of connection with everything and everyone when I’m alone walking, writing, sitting…than it is when I’m around other people, especially large groups.  I’m learning to “just sit” with my sense of anxiety over where I fit.  Learning to not run away, even when I start worrying about where my place is, or what other people think of me.  Trying to learn to just be myself, just allow, not walk through that desert, repenting (for what, I’m not even sure).

We all are, no matter how lonely, a part of the family of things.  We all have a place.  This sense of separation we have is, ultimately, an illusion.