"...Your One Wild and Precious Life"

I read a quote recently that literally took my breath. It gave me a moment of heart-stopping clarity.

I was starting a new book…. Always with pleasure and anticipation…. And this quote was  at the beginning.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

Still I can’t read it without being transfixed. I guess all of us are touched in different ways by various things; Things which resonate with us on a primal level. I put the book down. It was all I could handle at the moment. I was full. The quote is from New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver.

First of all, a while back I created a vision board. On it, one of the things I wanted more of in my life was poetry. I wanted to know more about it, read more of it and be exposed to more poets. Since that time, in the way of the Universe, poets abound in my life. My mother was a gifted, published poet so I had an appreciation for it… just not vast knowledge.  Still my knowledge about it would fit on the head of a pin. Not even. But I love it and I love learning about new poets and old. Their words make my heart sing. They make me see the world with fresh eyes. So there’s that.

So back to the quote. We all have philosophies about life, even if we don’t call them “our philosophy.” It struck me and I do mean “struck”, that this thing we so offhandedly call life, IS a wild thing. A precious thing. And to live without intention is like circling a void.

I have never been sure we only have one shot at life. But I do know that right now it’s the only thing we can be sure of. As a teenager I loved to read Edgar Cayce. I loved his belief that we are beings of light that live and re-live until we get it right. But say, even if reincarnation is real… why would you waste any part of life, whether it’s your only one or your one hundredth? Part of me feels like weeping for the time lost already. Part of me wants to put it right.

So what are you going to do with your “one wild and precious life?”