The Journey Ahead

The second-to-last day at my job is wrapping up. This morning I made further progress on dismantling my office, and felt sad – as though I were dismantling a carefully constructed part of my career.

“No”, I reminded myself, “You’re dismantling the shackles of someone else’s needs, of duties than often never really belonged to you at all.  Ahead is freedom … to work more closely on bettering the world, and on the things that have deeper meaning than being someone else’s task-master.”

It’s always hard to say goodbye, even when we look forward to the journey ahead with our whole hearts.  In honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day today, I will share a poem by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. I stumbled on this without really looking for it…

The Journey

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.