#8: The Journey

Mary Oliver on transformation

The last lines of this poem cropped up in a recent conversation. The poem was written by Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019).

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

The conversation was about joining the dots in this disrupted world. How do we make sense of what is happening in front of our noses? Other phrases that were mentioned were finding balance, living in harmony, being in control. The poem makes an explicit case for only one route – save your own life, it is the only life you can save.

This is quite a different interpretation to that of another poem on journeys we looked at a few weeks ago – Ithaka, by CP Cavafy, which asked us to consider the purpose of our lives as a journey, not as a destination. Here the journey is tough, leaving behind people telling you what to do (there is comfort in that, hey?), throwing off that familiar sense of responsibility to ‘mend other people’s lives’, pushing hard into the wind, over broken branches and stones. And it is a lonely journey, to be sure. Yet, slowly you find your own voice, slowly you become more determined to do the only thing you can do – save your own life.

This sounds to me like a journey towards one’s authentic self. It was only a matter of time for that word to arrive! The pathway to authenticity for a person may be the hardest journey one takes. What did Polonius say to his son, Laertes, setting off on a journey in Hamlet, Act 1 Sc. 3?

‘This above all: to thine own self be true

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

Mary Oliver is offering us practical advice on being true to ourselves, being authentic. And her main piece of advice in her poem? Apply your strength of character to recognize your own voice. Your voice might be your only companion as you stride deeper into the world. Use it to sustain your strength, to keep you focused, to help you be courageous when others doubt you. It will reinforce your determination to do the only thing you can do. You know by now what that is.

This will not be a swift process. You probably already know that. Yet, it will be a necessary process – achieving harmony, balance, settled and supportive relationships, control not over events or other people but over your responses to those things.

But is this not the objective foreseen by Cavafy in Ithaka after all?