The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I love this poem. Everyone loves the ending – I keep finding it quoted all over the place, and I love it too. Usually when I see it quoted, though, the person is talking about about the immense accomplishments which we all hope for in our lives. It is so easy to feel that memorable and notable accomplishment is the measure of a life well lived. And indeed, perhaps that is part of it. But we don’t spend much time focussing on the accomplishment of a day well lived, or a moment.

To really pay attention to each moment, we can’t spend all of our time worrying about what we plan to do with our one life. I seem to be incapable of planning my life like a game of chess, plotting each move and each possible path to ensure victory. I need to focus in, and enjoy where I am. Otherwise I will never be able to enjoy where I end up.

Image by {manda}

Another thought: I want so many things, but I don’t want for much.

I was just rereading some old emails. Just over a year ago I was working in a job that I hated more and more every day, and I would write emails to my friend Hillary trying to figure out what my next step would be, how to be happy. One day, i wrote:

I keep thinking: so I’m not happy here… so what DO I want? Its not so clear. I get this muddled image of a life where I write and hike and cook and have beautiful children. That doesn’t really help me come up with a networking strategy or help me decide on what jobs to apply for on Charity Village. I know that if I had that ideal life I would feel cut off, dissatisfied, like all my education was going to waste. But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe my education was just for me anyway.

I am so much happier now, for many reasons, but it was not quite by design. I just decided to leave, and I did. I  applied for a few jobs that I found appealing for a variety of reasons, I accepted the first one that was offered to me.

Will my life always be like that? Or will it become something that I actually design? How many people design their lives precisely? Are they happier than the rest of us? I often feel as if I should be more intentional and strategic in my choices, I should give up more to gain things in the long run, but I never seem to know what to give up and what I’m aiming to gain. Maybe a life where I write and hike and cook and have beautiful children?

I haven’t been writing, and I’m sorry! I’ve been a little bored lately, and I think that makes my brain a little understimulated. Hence, nothing to write about. But that is going to change SOON! I know because the book I am reading is getting my brain ruminating on many things.

More to come.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – HOME

It could have made a fun first dance at our wedding this summer!

But my question is always there:

WHAT RISK?

I have an amazing job, one where I advise some of Canada’s top young leaders on the next big steps they should be taking in their lives. Every day, I think about meaningful risks for other people, and help them to craft their lives so that each step scares them a little, but takes them to a new place, usually one that they couldn’t have imagined. I have gotten pretty good at giving all sorts of advice to all sorts of people, and the underlying message in everything I say is “Take a risk!”.

Do I need to take my own advice? What risks have I taken lately? I moved to Toronto. I continued to live here, to give it a chance when my wood-oriented self told me I couldn’t find a life that would suit me. I have taken very challenging jobs, jobs that I was not certain I could do. But the one I have now was not one of them.

I love it, but if it wasn’t a risk, was it a large enough leap?

[Photo from here]

Two of my favourite passages from the novel Stanley Park, by Timothy Taylor :

This guy had the quality of actualized self. Needs, freedoms, known desires, a creative centre.

and

I have made a lifetime of examining the evidence of the root or its absence. All people, I have observed, will reveal two things in this regard if you look at them from the right angle. The first is an innate polarity, a tendency to either root or to move. The second is evidence of the alternative that has been foregone. [...] The homeless were observed to include both the derelict and the celebrant.

I especially love the second one. Am I derelict or celebrant? I am a person who is oriented towards woods, lakes, and small communities. I am a drifter who has never lived in one place for longer than 8 months since graduating from high school. And yet here I find myself in Toronto: I swore that I would never live here, and when I did moved here anyway I was certain that it would only be for a year, only for school. Three years later, I am still here. For the first two years I kept looking for reasons to leave; in the last year I was faced with a good reason to go, and I realized that I didn’t want to. And here I am still.

The tendency to either root or move. I think I am shifting from one to the other.

Image from here.

I think I will spend some time thinking about this word today. How am I buoyant? How does buoyancy help us all?

nem⋅e⋅sis    [nem-uh-sis]

–noun, plural -ses [-seez]

3.	(initial capital letter) Classical Mythology. the goddess of divine retribution.

- From dictionary.com

This word was recently illuminated for me at a workshop I attended led by Frances Westly, author of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. The word is so interesting, as she pointed out, because its different meanings lend nuance to one another. Usually we take the word nemesis to mean an enemy. But often when we examine who the people are that we dislike and why it is that we dislike them, we discover a reflection of our own shortcomings. I often remind myself  that the things that annoy me the most in other people are the things that I probably need to work on in myself. But Frances turned this on its head, and  pointed out that the most annoying qualities of those we dislike could be reframed as positive attributes that we ourselves lack.

To illustrate:

1. Imagine someone you really bothers you, who makes you see red.
2. List some of the things that bug you so much about that person.
3. Now list the opposite of those things that bug you.  Those are probably good qualities that you see in yourself.
4. Flip it over: how do you think that person would describe the qualities from #2? Probably as strengths. These are possibly things that you need to develop in yourself.

i.e. your nemesis, or something you can’t conquer or achieve.

To be effective in life, in work, in groups, we need to recognize the positive qualities in those most different from ourselves and learn to work well with them. This is how we overcome our nemesis.

(Image from here)

To have a writing desk with my own lap top, journals and space. My own study, and time to spend in it.

A sunny, woody kitchen, with bread in the over and loved ones on their way over to eat it.

Exploring lakes. Not having them handed to me all packaged, national park style, but seeing them on a map and going to discover what they look like in real life.