Whew! It always amazes me how exhausting mental work is. I can remember back in my youth–during my college days–I used to work on a farm. The physical exertion associated with any number of chores I was responsible for was exhausting but deeply satisfying. The last serious farm work I did was over 30 years ago, and though I worked hard in my gardens and doing yard work over the years, I haven’t had much in the way of physical work in a number of years now. This is something I hope to remedy in the near future. In the meantime, I am reminded that sometimes the expending of mental energy can often make me as tired as working out physically. The past few days have felt like constant meetings and mental activity, and while they have been generative, productive, and mostly positive meetings, I am aware that I am somewhat “peopled out” and in need of some mental down time, which is not likely to come until the weekend.
I am grateful to be working, to be using my skills, gifts and creativity in the service of–at the risk of sounding dramatic–making the world a better place. I know, right? Perhaps that sounds a little over the top corny, but as I look at the work I do and have done for many years I am aware that it is largely about creating spaces where individuals can live and learn and bring their best and whole selves into everything they do.
This is one of those evenings when my level of exhaustion is going to win out over my desire to continue writing. So I will conclude simply by offering a poem that I’ve come to appreciate over the past year or so. I first heard the last lines of the poem as an invitation from my friend Mary, something for me to think about as I contemplated my next steps for my life. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I have been pleased at the direction that my one wild and precious life has taken recently. And while I’m not sure how long I’ll continue this work before I retire to the farm, for now I am in a pretty good place. And for that I can’t help but be exceedingly grateful.
Enjoy “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
