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.
