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The Journey ... as a place to start
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There is a tug that can happen between tending to others and tending to ourselves. Yes, we can do both and yet sometimes we must become fierce and dedicated about loving ourselves, nurturing ourselves, in order to settle back home into our authentic, centered souls. From that place we have so very much to give to ourselves, our loved ones, and the world.
My favorite poet and Pulitzer Prize Winner, Mary Oliver, beautifully captures this place of calling in her poem, The Journey.
The Journey
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.
- 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.
- Mary Oliver
