Wild Geese - on not getting with the program

Day 9 – no hot flashes so far, no tears, horny as hell and still on that period! For somebody who rarely ever gets them, this is becoming a bit annoying. In reality, this does of course mask some traces of concern, but I’ll give it a couple of days before I call the clinic.

Meanwhile, this seems like a good time to put into writing some of the thoughts that have been crystallising themselves over the last year or so. I guess it doesn’t get any more profound than talking about the purpose of life. Note that I didn’t say “the meaning of life”, I have no idea about that one, I mean the purpose that you put your life to.

In many ways, if it hadn’t been for my infertility, it would have been so easy to get with the program. School (check), university (check), PhD (check), build a career (check??), take a break to get pregnant, have a baby, arrange expensive childcare, work your arse off during the day to continue your career, see your child evenings and weekends, give up on anything else until your child is much older (have at least one more child along the way). I’m rapidly running out of checked boxes there.

When you drop out of the program and it isn’t by choice, you’ve really got two options: you feel bad about it or you decide to make your own. Actually, it’s far from simple – I’ve in the past spent an inordinate amount of time feeling bad about it until I eventually started to appreciate the joy of being free from that pre-set plan. But that’s ok – it’s an existential crisis, it’s allowed to be messy. I see people in this kind of crisis all the time. It's always tough, but if the opportunity in the crisis can be grasped, much can be gained. It’s a beautiful feat of human spirit.

Where am I in all this? Sometimes I think I’m still somewhere in the messy bit. In some areas of my life, I’m still living in the tattered remnants of the program, even if they don’t really fit me now. Yes, it’s work I’m talking about. But isn’t that perhaps another trap? The concept that your career has to be the focus of your life? I can tell you exactly what the focus of my life has been lately! Being a sexual adventuress and writing about it suits me just fine, no other focus needed. I would be very surprised if I didn’t lie on my deathbed one day thinking back fondly to that time.

But what about some kind of lasting legacy? Did this make a contribution to humanity? I don’t know! It made a few people quite happy. Perhaps it was even a tiny jigsaw piece in the continuing movement towards sexual liberation. Is yet another research paper in a journal that nobody reads any more of a contribution? I’d rather have a few thousand people read one of my literotica stories to be honest. And if we’re truly honest about it? Who ever gets to make one of those big lasting contributions anyway? Beyond the people you’ve known and touched personally in some way, who really will remember you? So if I don’t get to live on in my children or in any other lasting legacy, then perhaps I just don’t get to live on beyond my life. Maybe that’s ok? Isn’t that enough? More than enough even? Isn't it enough to make a conscious effort to LIVE your life at least? I’ll let another poet say it better than I can:

Wild Geese 
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. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
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.

Copyright Mary Oliver Online source