The Wild Geese -Mary Oliver

When I first read the poem, 'The Wild Geese', I felt an instant connection with the poet. I've read the poem over and over again, and everything the poet says seems to fit in with the way I see the world. 

I've had a lot of moments of deep thought about our significance in the world. I've wondered about how, when we all die, the world moves on anyway, without stopping for an instant, and all that's left of you is a memory which eventually, although (perhaps) slowly, fades away. What is our life, which we give so much importance to, which we hold so dear and worry so much about, even worth in the end? For a long time, I thought that for our life to have any significance, we have to make an impact on the world, we have to make a change and do something effective for that memory to last a little longer when we don't anymore. I searched for a long time for the purpose of life until one day, I realised that plain and simply, the purpose of life is to just live it, and the only way you can do that is to be who you are and love what you do.

Mary Oliver seems to be saying the same thing: 

"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."

She says that you don't have to conform to society's standards or what it defines as good and worthwhile. You don't have to 'walk on your knees' doing something you don't want to. You can just let your instincts, or your true self show itself and love what it loves. You live for you and not for someone else.

Yet, there are still other people in the world and you share a connection with these people. The poet shares a personal moment with the reader at this point, saying "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." She seems to imply that we all have our moments of sadness, our problems and issues -big or small. But this despair can not make us stop living. "Meanwhile the world goes on." At this point the poet beautifully describes nature and you see the world in all its glory. As a reader, I'd forgotten about my despair by the time I read those next few lines.

The world seemed so big and glorious and overwhelming that I lost myself in it. Almost literally, I couldn't find my place in it, a feeling similar to the belief I had about the insignificance of the life of people. But the poem continues to say, 

"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."

So, just about then, Mary Oliver found me. She found my place in the big "family of things." 

I love how the poet says that the world is what you make of it ("The world offers itself to your imagination") because I, also, believe that your reality is what you create and the world isn't the same to every person. It is also interesting that the poet talks so much about nature, never once implying that humans are the centre of the universe as many like to believe. She emphasizes that we belong in the family of things rather than just people and this is one of the most important messages the poem seems to convey to me. 

In a sense, Mary Oliver seems to be saying, "You matter! But, you're not the only one who does."