I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverRead
And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
Interpretation
The quote encourages us to embrace life and respond meaningfully to the beauty around us.
Mary Oliver's quote reflects on the beauty of the world and poses a profound question about our existence. It reminds us that each day, we are presented with the opportunity to engage with life and contribute in a way that reflects our appreciation for the world around us. The notion of making a 'serious response' speaks to the importance of taking our experiences and responding to them thoughtfully and authentically.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire others to engage with their dreams.
I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Muhammad Ali was a god, an idol and an icon. He was boxing. Any kid that had the opportunity to talk to Ali, to get advice from Muhammad Ali, was privileged. He's always given me time to ask questions, although I was so in awe that I didn't ask questions.
When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly, he announces. When I woke, I couldn't... or so the maester said. But what if he lied? What do you mean? Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower? No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap. There is the window. Leap. What do you want? The world.
I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.
I believe in the impossible because no one else does.
Dawn's faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale— you are life, an awakening. Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath— the night is done. You are light and morning.
This year I am choosing to live beyond my wildest dreams. I wonder where they'll take me.
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