You do not have to be good

You Do Not Have to Be Good

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 do not have to be good.

You do not have to be good.

You only have to allow the soft warm animal of your heart and body and mind and soul love what they love.

What do they love?

Being alive.

What do they love?

Discovering the mysteries of field and meadow and leaf and stream and sunshine and smile and love ( and money, ha).

You only have to fly, harsh and exciting of wing flap and heart soar, into the clear blue skis, over the bright golden meadows, the white snowy peaks, the churning turquoise oceans, the dark gleaming pebbles the sparkling ecstatic streams.

Soar, fly, take it all in.

It’s all yours.

Life.

You are part of the family of things and the family means a loved one and some friends. You don’t have to have children, but you do need to give birth of something wild and soaring and mysterious.

Like a baby

Like a poem.

Like a crazy ass book, a paintng, a song, your own dance of that day, your own amazing communication, a symphony, a new thought. A quietness of the mind and soul.

Give birth to yourself, the emptiness dancing that is who you really are.

And, yes, yes, you can create your own business, but a business for the soaring of it, and the love for life and your partner and your colleagues, and employees, and mainly for the world who is going to delight in your helping them soaring over the golden green blue sparkling earth.

The world is ours to love.

You do not have to be good because you are really good, you are made that way, before you eat the apple of “this is good, and this is bad.”

Adam and Eve. You do not have to be good Eve. Be yourself and you are the whole of the universe. You don’t have to worry about what the serpent thinks is right, You don’t have to worry about what God thinks is right.

Hug that man, Eve, and dance in the garden.

And so today: let’s hug.

And talk.

At the same time.

You do not have to be good at being present. You do not have to be good at hugging.

And naturally, you will do fine. Just fine. Wonderfully.

It’s all easy, this life and loving thing, if we don’t worry about what other people think (which is usually what “good” is, something like the lowest common denominator of repressed behavior to not scare the most unhappy person in the room with our happiness).

What other people about you think is almost always a reliable indicator of their pathology, and only rarely has anything much to do with you.

You trigger them. They tell you to be good, which, as said above means: don’t scare me by showing me how happy I could be if I stopped worshipping my chains.

And finally, it’s easy, this life and loving thing, if we don’t worry about what our opinion of how we “should be” thinks about us.

If we just live.

And this isn’t hedonism.

Though with your mate, sensual pleasure is one of the best ways in the world to create mutual warmth and nourishing.

Not hedonism, no. This is soft easy pleasant touch, yes.

And talk.

Let the soft warm you in your heart and hands and legs and lips and bellies and all over, and the soft warm you in your mind without words and the soft warm you of your soul merging with another be your guide.

At least some of the day.

Like Now.

Hug your partner, standing.

Hug for awhile, at least two minutes without saying anything.

Then take turns of a minute to two minutes ( don’t time it, just guess) of saying exactly what you are feeling.

In your touch: I feel my fingers stroking your hair. In your reception: I feel your fingers caressing my hair.

Go slowly. Do things. Slow things.

Notice them.

Include gravity.

Include breath.

Include everything.

Share back and forth your present experience.

What comes next?

You discover.