BE YOUR OWN VALENTINE II

Another Valentine’s Day is upon us, and with it: all the cultural drilling to look outside of ourselves for satiation. Take today as an invitation to step back from this externally focused hypnosis and feast on your life. Spend some time to contemplate and celebrate your own life, regardless of external circumstances. Always remember that what you are looking for is what you are looking with. Celebrate, play, and explore while keeping this truth in your back pocket.

Here is an old standby gem of a poem by Mary Oliver to feed your heart:

"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.