APPROACH CHANGE WITH GENTLE CURIOSITY
I was re-reading the wonderful poem ‘The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver recently. The last two lines resonated with me right now:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
I have been in a very reflective mood recently, possibly because of the changes I have been through. I have moved from Johannesburg to the Dolphin coast – back to the ‘playground’ of my youth from the landscape of most of my adult life. I had faced selling our beautiful family home and packing up our memories with trepidation and some fear.
But actually, the journey has not been as daunting as I had thought, and although I knew that having close family here, including my only grandchild, would ease the transition, I did wonder if some of the positives of getting older had played a role.
After all, living in a city for over 30 years defines you in many ways – you have markers by which you identify yourself both to you and to others. By starting without all that history, you get to spend some quite interesting time exploring your relationship with yourself. Who am I now? What will my life look like? Do I actually still care about the same things I used to? And this is where I think being older does play a positive role. And heavens knows, in this youth-driven world we find ourselves in, we need every little bit of positivity when it comes to getting older.
So, here is my take: in my new environment I have given myself permission to let go of ways of being that no longer serve me. I also have that sense of freedom being older brings – you really do care less about societal expectations. And change is less daunting because you already know what you value, like the time spent with loved ones and the appreciation of lifelong friends, no matter how far away they are.
The lucky ones continue to practise gratitude - like the pleasures change can bring. And whilst we are promoting some of the benefits of getting older, you really do appreciate those small joys of everyday life…
“…like gazing at a grasshopper watching me with its “enormous and complicated eyes”.
A 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?
