Part of Things
Some musings on existence
Sometimes I picture myself up in the stars, looking down on earth. It’s so small. I think about that a lot these days. Everything feels so overwhelming, so huge down here, but we’re actually just specks? We can’t even be seen from a lot of places. We are so tiny. I think about looking at us from high up, and I think about the way I am as small as a grain of sand from certain viewpoints. A dot. Something that doesn’t even seem big enough to have any thoughts about anything.
Our lives are so short too. In the timeline of the universe, my life is also an almost imperceptible blip, like it might never have existed. I like thinking about how my life is so meaningful, but also so much…nothing. I agonize over every decision, but so many of those decisions don’t even have that big of an impact on my own life, let alone the blip I am in the timeline of All Things.
Thoughts like these can, of course, throw one into nihilism. Maybe nothing we do matters. Maybe we should be the worst versions of ourselves because we are nothing but a speck. Instead, I use it to free myself. I can do some good. I can choose kindness. This is a beautiful thing. BUT I am not likely to throw off the whole course of events by choosing to do the “wrong” thing today now, am I? If I am a speck, maybe it is okay for me to exist in my tiny speck life as I am. Maybe I will not destroy the world if I don’t manage to become THE MOST SUCCESSFUL version of myself.
We humans are so full of our own importance, but what if we could just exist along with everything? What if I’m not so completely different from a blade of grass? When I picture myself floating among the stars, I feel peaceful, because I feel simply a part of things. Floating gently through space. Alive and thinking, but also just existing. Weightless. Out from under the pressure to Be Important. What if I can melt into this feeling of belonging more often? Is it possible to believe in the beauty of mere existence? I do not require the woodpecker outside my window to do anything but exist as it is created with its “One wild and precious life.” *
What if I am whole now? What if I am a beautiful, whole part of life as I am?
*I recognize that the spirit of the original poem by Mary Oliver is actually about enjoying the everyday life, but this line has been co-opted by motivational speakers enough that it can sometimes feel like you have a duty to do something amazing with your one life.
In a way, I think you are reclaiming Mary Oliver's poem from the claws of those who would abuse and misrepresent it. To my eye she is celebrating the ability to step back from her own busyness in order to celebrate a tiny grasshopper's ordinary (for them) activity. To live life by paying attention, even if that might be seen as "idle and blessed".
That final line you quote can be taken in different ways, but surely the most natural is that time spent appreciating the small and often ignored is an equally good way of using your "one wild and precious life" as any other. We "die at last, and too soon" seems to me a prompt to appreciate life while we have it, not a pressure to make sure we achieve some sort of performance-based 'leaving certificate' before we go. Isn't it?
Oh, I feel you! There is tremendous peace in not taking yourself so seriously and seeing that you are PART of something. Here to serve and be served in a continuous giving and taking, just like in nature. It instantly relaxes my mind. I don’t need to special, we all are! :)