Same Words. New Message.

I’ve started to embrace privacy.  I find myself having these big long interesting conversations with myself and then doing absolutely nothing with them except for letting them be.  I don’t tell a soul.  God might be eavesdropping, but who knows.

All these opinions, man  They are everywhere.  You can’t go anywhere these days without being smacked in the face with someone’s opinion.  And despite the irony of having just shared mine, I find myself remiss to contribute.  I used to post on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram pretty regularly.  I had a two week fling with Pinterest before realizing that, for me, it is simply an official way to be covetous. Maybe useful if I plan to redecorate, but otherwise… no.

For many years before I wrote at this site, I had this deep sort of unquenchable thirst to do something big and grand that everyone would notice.  I wanted to matter a lot.  And I wanted to do it in a really big way. I didn’t want to to have just a regular life. I wanted an extraordinary one.

As I grew older and got married and had a family, I began to see the poetry in ordinary life and began to understand that I’d been missing some important information when I set my goals.  But I still wanted to be extraordinary.  The thing is, even though I knew my goals were unreachable — that no matter how big or how grand my accomplishments, there would always be an unquenchable desire to do more — I worked tirelessly to quench that thirst.  I yearned to stand out from the crowd in some way.  I knew that I didn’t want to want it.  But I still wanted it.

And then this sad thing happened to me last month — this thing that I don’t care to share on the internet, but from which I plan to make a full emotional and physical recovery.  And it’s like a switch flipped in me.  That burning desire, that insatiable thirst?  It is gone. It just… is.  I don’t know why because this sad event and my insatiable thirst to stand out are in no way connected.  Yet the switch has flipped and that need doesn’t even smolder anymore.

This poem by Mary Oliver follows me around.  You know what I mean by that?  Something you read once and then you hear it spoken aloud or you see it in a book or you read it on someone else’s facebook status or whatever and every time you see it, you sort of get the heebie jeebies because you know it was meant for you to see at that one moment.  It’s some cosmic message, right?

Well the poem that follows me around is by Mary Oliver and has the line “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I always used to read it and thought that it was the universe encouraging me to dig deeper, to try harder, to be more more more.

And this week, it crept up on me again and the universe sent me the same words with an entirely new message.

I don’t know how often I’ll be writing here anymore.  I’m only going to do it when I feel compelled to write, and for no other reason.  So, I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Not that I think you’re too worried about it, my little turtledoves.