Wild Geese

After all this time, and all this work, I still tend to fall into worry and thinking. It's still effort for me to just let myself dance. Over the time I've been tangoing I've collected an ever-growing box of tools for dealing with this, for letting myself go, for trusting myself, for accepting myself, but the enemy is cunning, and shifts and adapts to keep up with the latest technology. Perhaps I'll always have to work at this. Perhaps in ten years time I'll still be writing whiny posts about how I can't get my brain to shut up.

So, thanks to Nuit for reminding me again of the importance of letting myself have fun. Tonight I decided to trust myself - my body does this well when I don't harrass it - and I had a good night. And then I came home and came across a poem which I'd forgotten all about but love, and which has much to say on this subject. Here it is: Mary Oliver's Wild Geese.

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.