I read this quote from the poet, Mary Oliver the other day:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
I found myself thinking about her words all day, both the simplicity and the truth. Maybe that’s the power of poetry. It speaks to that part of us that can hear the simplicity of truth.
I also allowed myself to deepen into an inquiry, using her words as an invitation, breaking it down into steps.
The first one: pay attention.
When you hear that phrase, what comes to your mind?
For me, it’s mindfulness. It’s the practice of presence and being more present to this exact moment. When I can do that, I am truly able to pay attention. I stop listening to my internal chatter and allow myself to simply be.
What’s one way you could pay attention even more?
The second invitation is to be astonished. When I first read that, I instantly thought about Dacher Keltner’s research on awe and his book: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
One of the exercises he shares, is to go on an Awe Walk and really allow yourself to experience the beauty all around. When I first heard this idea, it made me think of what it’s like to be with young children, toddlers, who find the smallest things – like a worm or leaf- mesmerizing. Certainly, the natural world can astonish us, but so can cityscapes, sculpture, even a great outfit on a stranger who passes.
In part, it’s also about our willingness to see the elegance and beauty of the world.
And then – to share it, right?
Certainly telling others about it is an act of sharing.
These lines, by the way, are from a poem called Sometimes. Below is the full poem for you to enjoy. Read it and see what pops out for you!
Sometimes by Mary Oliver
1.
Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.
Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.
But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.
2.
Sometime
melancholy leaves me breathless…
3.
Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!
The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.
4.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
5.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.
6.
God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body
like the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again—
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably—
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.
7.
Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.
After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened
to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
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Image courtesy of Matt Seymour on Unsplash