Jimmy Beh

You must never stop being whimsical.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable world, better than anger, better than bitterness, and because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe—that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.”

Mary Oliver; “Staying Alive”

I have found myself captivated by Mary Oliver’s poems and prose for the last couple weeks and no passage has struck me more than this one from her essay, “Staying Alive.” In particular, the notion of “having chosen to claim my life…”

In our world, birth is a lottery. You do not choose your parents, your culture, or your physical and mental abilities. You are born into a set of circumstances without any consultation on the matter. We simply wake up one day and it is what it is. However, such circumstances, whether comfortable or tragic, still provide each of us with a choice—a choice that we may fail to see. This is the choice between viewing these circumstances, aka our life, as a gift or not—and if we dare to see our life as a gift, how do we choose to accept this gift?

Like most things in life, we start by looking at our relationships. In mature relationships, there are at least three important aspects: giving, receiving, and the unknown. Giving and receiving are straight forward enough, but we often forget about the unknown. You see, many of us are guilty of thinking that because we have known someone for many years that we know everything about them. We’ve got them all figured out. However, all we truly know is our memory of them, and the moment we convince ourselves that we know them totally we stop being open to them. While this may sound sad at first, it is a wonderful reality because this invites us to continue uncovering the endless layers of that relationship. As far as I can tell, this endlessly layered mystery of relationship is true for all our relationships, and none more so than our relationship with Life. 

Therefore, when it comes to claiming and accepting this gift of life, we must start by approaching this mystery at the core of each of our lives with a real sense of openness, curiosity, and adventure. We each may go about this in slightly unique ways, but Mary Oliver addresses two methods in her essay that overlap for us all: work and love. 

For some, work may be in the arts like Mary Oliver. Where we yearn to create artwork or literature to share with the world. However, work does not have to be artistic in order to be shared or valuable. Each of us has skills and talents, and our aim should be to use our skills and talents to positively impact our community and our world. Mary Oliver does this through poetry and prose, which evoke a sense of spiritual wonder and awe through the natural world. Whatever we deem our art or craft to be—we should allow ourselves to be passionate about it and be open to feedback. It’s not about trying to find the perfect profession; it’s about reflecting who we are through our work. The best work always shares a personal reflection of its creator.

In addition to work, we strive to claim our life through our ability to love. While there is no shortage of ways that love drives our lives, in this instance, I want to draw our attention to two aspects of love: integration and reconciliation. 

When we allow love to guide our journey, we embrace a both-and mentality and not an either-or mentality. This means both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ have value and meaning in our lives. In fact, they are necessary for us to see more of the whole picture. Richard Rohr uses the phrase “everything belongs” to describe this contemplative view. Another way to think of this is through the expression that says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives” (that means all of it!). As a result, we must work to cultivate an openness and curiosity toward all our life experiences. This openness will hopefully lead us to the recognition that there is no real division between sacred and secular, there is only the sacred. 

If we can embrace this loving gaze, this contemplative view, toward ourselves and the world around us, we might also find it easier to experience reconciliation. Said another way, we might be more willing to forgive others and ourselves because we recognize we are all imperfect people journeying toward our inner, true self. Such an understanding should invite us to embody the father from the prodigal son parable—not pointing fingers or criticizing but celebrating the return of a loved one. It is through our ability to forgive and ask for forgiveness that we discover a greater and greater depth to love, which, in many ways, encourages us to continue our journey in life. A journey that begins to reveal the sacramental nature of all our relationships.

It is important to mention that these methods or perspectives on the influence of work and love in our lives differ greatly from our American approach of punishment and reward. If work and love are pursued with the goal of being rewarded or praised, we will totally miss the point. There is no level of achievement that could prove our worthiness of the gift of life—the gift we were given freely. Instead, Thomas Merton reminds us, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” 

All of us are indeed on our own journey of discovering and uncovering our true self, and I pray that even when we experience failures that we will always muster up the courage to keep journeying. And as we journey with the freedom to choose our life, let our work and our love accompany and encourage others on the same path.