The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver-
There comes a moment when the cost of staying becomes greater than the risk of leaving—when you must choose your own life over everyone else's expectations. Mary Oliver maps the territory of that choice: the voices that demand you stay small, the guilt that pulls you back, the terrible loneliness of the first steps. And then, slowly, the discovery that your own voice has been waiting all along, ready to companion you into the world you were always meant to inhabit.
