I have long been a fan of the poet Mary Oliver, a dear American woman who has a seemingly endless ability to pin down the natural world with a poem. Though I have read many of her collections, my favorite Mary Oliver poem was dropped in to my lap a couple of years ago, at the end of a yoga class. Lying in a Savasana with my eyes closed, I, along with a roomful of fellow yogis, listened as the instructor recited Wild Geese. Perhaps it was the calm bliss that comes at the end of a yoga session, or perhaps I was just tired, but somehow the words seemed to wash over me with a wonderful sense of peace. Years later, I still remember this poem fondly and keep it tucked within the folds of my memory.
Wild Geese
Mary OliverYou 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 your 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.
Having been thinking so much about body image lately with the start of the blog, a connection to this beloved poem suddenly sparked in my mind. It occurred to me that Wild Geese is largely in accordance with the mission of Uniquely Beautiful – promotion of acceptance and diversity. Like the blog, this poem boldly pronounces that “you do not have to be good.” You don’t have to be skinny, tan, tall, or perfect in order to love yourself or others, but rather you can learn to let yourself “love what [you] love.” This past week we have tabled around campus asking people to abandon being “good” and make stickers showing us what they love about themselves. The answers have been as varied as “my courage” and “my strength” to “my swag” and “killer fashion sense.” People have proclaimed to love their heritage, freckles, glasses, and big feet. Declared themselves to be dreamers, nerds, vegetarians, loud, quiet, and dozens of other things that make them feel beautiful. To me, the results of this campaign reinforce the fact that “whoever you are,” despite how different you may feel, “the world […] calls to you like the wild geese, […] over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” William and Mary students have proven themselves to be different – unique, in fact – and this project has made me understand that we all have a place in the world, in this campus community; that despite differences we are all part of the same family, which is shaped by each and every one of our different personalities, bodies, and interests. At the end of the day, we all have a place in this William and Mary family, and it wouldn’t be the same without any one of us.