This morning I sat quietly listening to the rain, feeling wet tears on my face, and I rested with Mary Oliver for a while. Her words. Her spirit. Making sense of the world. Speaking to me, breaking it down, putting it together. The world lost a giant today.
If you are unfamiliar with her poetry, Google her and take a moment to feast. Her words slay me. Like one of my other favorites, Rumi, she has a breathtaking gift for sharing the most beautiful truths with such simplicity and delight. To me, she is accessible, grounded, easy, earthy, spirited and inspiring. She reminds us of our oneness, our interconnectedness with nature, and her words keep our big computer brains in check.
I have no idea what her private life was like, but she seemed to have a knack for tuning into higher frequencies, celebrating the quiet majesty of the every day. Things most people tend to glide right over, focusing instead on the thing or two that’s wrong. Mary Oliver reminds us to look at all that is right in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot about frequency this week. Specifically, how to cultivate and maintain living in a higher one, on a consistent basis. To notice what I’m tuning into throughout the day, and to course correct when necessary. Connected to this is the acknowledgment of happiness being an inside job, happiness that has nothing to do with external forces: the gig, the traffic, the paycheck, the recognition, the “likes”.
As life went back to “normal” after jury duty last week, I seemed to lose my center almost immediately. Getting thrust into work. Wrestling with freelancer’s anxiety: I have to make money – which is totally true; it’s the desperation I can do without. Being sad about not winning certain jobs – when the secret is, I didn’t even really want them. The freakin laundry. The bathtub that needs refinishing. The unending To Do list. There’s a myriad of not terrible, but slightly negative woes that pull my focus, the sum of which, when added up over a day – can leave the overall resolution of my life a bit drearier than it ought to be.
The worry, the resentment, the rushing, the white-knuckling, the internal monologue of complaints, it’s all just habit. It’s where I find myself time and time again, not because it’s necessary, but because it’s where I’ve lived on and off my whole life. It’s what I learned to tune into. I’m comfortable there, in a sense, even though I’m really not. It’s familiar.
I had a big frequency shift when I moved to LA. Geographicals can do that sometimes. All the light here, and the more readily accessible joy that people walk with because of it. The mild winters. The overall easier life; it helped a lot. But 15 years in, I’m becoming aware that perhaps I’ve plateaued. I know I ought to be experiencing more joy and gratitude on a daily basis. I’ve built a great life. I want to enjoy it more in the everyday moments. I deserve that. We all do.
And so I’ve been challenging myself to first notice and then reprogram those low frequency thoughts. I’m equating it with changing a radio channel; I think it can really be that simple. Everytime I get a low-rez thought, or find myself in a vaguely low-rez vibration (which usually speaks through my body as a feeling of my heart drooping, or being pulled down) I consciously redirect myself into a higher frequency. Whoops, wrong channel. Let me get that.
Light and polite. No beating up on myself or dwelling. Kind of how I approach tv news these days: Am I going to let myself get sucked in? Nahhh…Let’s turn on Netflix. I remind myself that what I’m building is awesome and that it’s a work in progress – and that actually, what Joe and I have already built together is bright and badass and beyond my previous self’s wildest dreams. Can I resonate there for a while?
Obviously, I know we all have our tough moments and that’s fine. We get to have those. I think it’s about how much time we indulge ourselves in staying there, and about knowing that even visiting there is, many times, completely optional. There is so much wonderfulness in the world. It’s all about what you tune into.
Thank you for the reminder, Mary Oliver; your words lift and will live forever!
(Tough to choose, but here’s a few of my favorites…)
Song of the Builders by Mary Oliver
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe
Mindful by Mary Oliver
Every Day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
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.
R.I.P. Mary Oliver
September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019
