Wild and precious life

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I remember a teacher reading this Mary Oliver poem in class. It was years ago when all the physical movements and big ideas in yoga class were fresh and new to me — it was exhilarating and it was terrifying. I don’t remember this particular class in any detail, but I remember the poem and this particular line and how hard it hit me. It was a jolt. I was in my 30s, I was just beginning to realise I had a life, instead of a mere existence. I was just beginning to feel some latent hope for what might be in the future. In my future. But these were unformed, emergent thoughts. I had no words for them.

What is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I didn’t know! I felt panicked. Was this a test? Would I have to fill out a quiz as I left the studio and my continued participation in this yoga thing would be dependent on my ability to answer such questions? I wanted to look around the room and ask everyone there, urgently, “tell me: what are you going to do?” I wanted to reach out and beg the teacher: “tell me, what shoud I do?” I felt that life was passing me by and I had no plan. I felt a failure. A waste of a precious life. And I assumed that all these (to me) godly yoga figures around me were in on some secret that I wasn’t part of.

I was in tough place then, both mentally and physically. I don’t think at the time I realised how hard things were for me, how many small obstacles there were to everyday activities and experiences that others took for granted. I don’t see myself as a victim, but I do recognise my struggle. As I look back more than a decade on, I don’t see failure in any way. I think I was amazingly tough and courageous, I was lost and confused but moving forward anyway, I was driven on by forces I vaguely recognised even if I couldn’t define them. I was powerful, hopeful, curious, energetic, devoted, scared-but-doing-it-anyway. It was wild and precious, daily.

My wild and precious life today looks both totally and same and entirely different to back then. But it certainly feels different and I have the precious gift of more perspective and some hard-won tools that make me a little more skilled. I ask the question now in the spirt of curiosity rather than with any panic. I understand the multiplicity of answers and layers, so I have sympathy for my ongoing confusion. That’s just part of my human existence. There’s no answer to the question, there is only meaning-making in addressing it and in addressing the existential truth behind it: we all have only one pass through life before it ends. It’s a stark reminder, yes, but it’s also so full of possibility (possibilities), and that in itself is exciting and joyful.

“There’s no getting it wrong” one of my students reminded me during class the other day. She was paraphrasing me when I urge my students to explore with trust in themselves, and to let go of the habit of turning to me as their teacher for ‘correction’. I remember also so many times when I’d express confusion to my own teacher and tell him “I can’t do it” – a particular asana, breathing through the emotional discomforts stirred up, the courage simply to come to class. I felt in desperate need not so much of correction, but certainly of guidance. His answer over the years was always the same “what do you mean you can’t do it? I see you doing it, you are doing it.”

So it is with my life.

It’s wild and precious. I am wild and precious. And I am living it.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?”