Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

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How much of your life has been spent trying to earn your place—through achievement, through goodness, through the relentless work of proving you deserve to exist? There is a place for becoming, for individuation. But that is not the same as trying to be good, perfected, or redeemed through suffering. You belong here not because you've earned it, but because belonging is your birthright. What would it mean to stop battling through life and simply let yourself be guided by the soft animal of your body that already knows what it loves?