Friday, March 01, 2013

"Instructions for Living a Life"

My heart is tired this week.

Tired, discouraged, and fighting what feels like this winter's seventeenth bout of illness, I turned to poetry. More specifically to Mary Oliver, who has been speaking to my heart a lot this year.

And I stumbled onto this stanza from her poem "Sometimes" in the collection titled "Red Birds":

"Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."

It was one of those poetry moments where I found myself not knowing whether to laugh or cry, so I think I did a little of both. This is so where I am right now in this tired, busy season. It's like she took a peek at my life and wrote exactly what my heart has been learning and wanting to say.

I love it when a writer does that.

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