Go
Be Wild
“To
be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a
delight in silence, a voice to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant
curiosity in the face of the unknown.”
Robert
Bly
Next to
Mary Oliver, Robert Bly is my favorite poet. He had such a unique voice—with poem
titles to remember, like “The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog.” Maybe I
relate to his poetry because it is unpretentious and grounded. It feels like
the mountains to me—like coming home.
I especially
like this description of what it means to be wild. We think of it as being free
spirited and risky—like driving too fast or binge drinking. But mostly, having
a wild streak means being your own person. Being acutely aware that you are
from the earth and have a unique place in the order of things. That you are
both a child of the soil and a product of star dust. You have an earthen side, but
a numinous nature, a flesh and blood body and a winged soul. You are both
animal and angel.
I hope
we haven’t lost that inner wildness. It seems like most of our young people
believe it’s what they do at the brewery, or the rave—and I guess that’s part
of being young and wild. I have a distant memory of such things. But the part
of wildness that we need to reaffirm is our relationship to ourselves and to the
natural world. We must regain our passion for the earth and its creatures. All
of us need to have that awareness and curiosity Bly mentions, otherwise, our indifference
will cause the natural world to wither and die, and we will be left without a
single idea of how to care for ourselves. It is the instinctual self, the
wildish part of us that understands what is needed in any given situation. All our
sophisticated and educated intelligence is of no use unless it is connected to our
instinctual nature, our innate understanding of how to survive.
Wildness
is not how many shots of tequila you can down without passing out. It is a deep
understanding of your own nature. It is the part of you that looks out through
your eyes and sees the world as beautiful and tragic, as life-giving, and
desperately in need of care. The part of you that understands that your life has
meaning and that there is something important you are supposed to do. And even
if you don’t know what that is, you are curious enough to pursue the answers.
It is being in touch with your beating heart and knowing that heart is in tune
with the universe. They beat together because they are one and the same.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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