Choose Your Focus, The Remix

This morning I was listening to an interview that Mary Oliver gave to Krista Tippett for the radio show On Being. Mary Oliver is my favorite poet, and I fell even more in love with her and her work as I listened to the conversation. Krista mentioned that paying attention seemed to be a common theme in Mary's body of poetry, to which Mary readily agreed. She has spent much of her life wandering through the woods near her home with notebook in hand, giving her full attention to the natural world and being inspired by what she has witnessed. 

Her arguably most famous poem, "The Summer Day," specifically mentions paying attention and seems like a beautiful exclamation point to my musings about being mindful from earlier this week. Every time I read this poem, I get to the end and just sit quietly with awe at the magnitude of that question. What am I going to do with this one life?

I am realizing that the answer starts with a much smaller but equally important question. What am I going to do with this moment?

My answer? I'm going to pay attention.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?