Rice by Mary Oliver

Rice

By Mary Oliver

It grew in the black mud.

It grew under the tiger's orange paws.

Its stems thicker than candles, and as straight.

Its leaves like the feathers of egrets,

but green.

The grains cresting, wanting to burst.

Oh, blood of the tiger.

I don't want you to just sit at the table.

I don't want you just to eat, and be content.

I want you to walk into the fields

Where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there,

far from the white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with mud,

like a blessing.

Follow your bliss

I remember these words like a mantra as I crawl through my final first year days, dazed.

Yesterday, I saw my Myers-Briggs test results. Nothing shocking there. Just a quiet and firm reenforcement of who I already knew I was. While it's normal to get tossed around in graduate school, as spring bursts forth and the sun pours down, it feels like the right time to stop questioning my character and priorities, and get back to basics.

Follow your bliss, which Net Impact founder and Babson resident Mark Albion boomed from the pulpit of the Entrepreneurship Forum, is truly a mantra. It's course-correcting pithiness, which is all that a mantra really is.

To me, when I am following my bliss, I am walking tall and proud. When I step off the road, and start wandering around in the underbrush looking for something else, thinking where I am and how I am and how I'm doing it is wrong, I am slamming the door on my heart, and on God, I dare say. This is a different matter from exploring, which is deliberately pursuing a new, clear, and valued goal. All of the difference lies in the quality of the detour. When I'm in the underbrush, my frame collapses, and I'm full of doubt, insecurity, and contrived enthusiasm. When I say, Let's go look at what's over there!, and march confidently and playfully toward a new world, that is where my bliss is taking me. To something new, expansive, and enriching.

uncertainty

I never knew at that age, in my 20s, that "I don't know" is actually a legitimate answer that you're allowed to say. You're allowed to say, I don't know, and you're allowed to ask for as much time as you need until you do know. And if somebody doesn't wanna give you that time, they're allowed to leave. But you're allowed to sit with your I don't know. And I never sat with it because it was uncomfortable. Nobody likes that place. And so I always said yes. Oh, sure. Let's move in together, let's get married, let's buy a house, let's do all this stuff that I was sort of half yes, half no.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

meditation

Quite often I feel myself tossed around by this world. Grounded and inspiring friends are the markers that steer me back to the path.

I started meditating again, after a long, long, long hiatus. Just one conversation with an old and sacred friend did it. She is so committed to herself and to her life. Just hearing the peace in her voice, and uttering my own intention to reconnect to self - that was enough to get me back on the cushion.

These are the kinds of people we need.

grateful

This weekend wasn't all that fun. I had a cold that made me feel like my face was melting off my skull and then there was a snowstorm and then we got stuck in New York, a city I've recently determined that I hate.

So there were some upsets. But when I finally got home somewhere around 1:00 pm on Monday, I was so grateful to see my house. I was so grateful to shovel out my car. I was so grateful to wash dishes and cut vegetables and make soup. Because even though I became utterly unglued in the City That Never Shuts Up, I saw clearly what kind of life I don't want - and what kind of life makes my heart sing.

unreasonable

Nicholas Kristof is a top-tier hero of mine. He is a writer but equally an activist, and "one ounce of action beats a ton of words." His book with wife Sheryl WuDunn called Half the Sky is one of the bravest books I have ever read.

I bow deeply to Nick and Sheryl.

And have to lift this quote from George Bernard Shaw:

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Amen.

paramount

Bisogna volersi bene. You must love yourself.

It really is paramount.