Jocelyn Edelstein writes, “I once lived in a small apartment cradled between a bay and some trees, and taped to one of its walls was a poem by Mary Oliver, one that I could see whenever I walked from my bedroom to the kitchen.
One line took residence in my body and refused to leave me alone. I turned it within me for years, like a key. I longed to unlock myself. Onward past the small apartment, every time I went on an adventure, in moments of sadness or in moments of insight, I recalled the line and I marveled at it:
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
The concept rocked me. To let the true, soft, intuitive, vulnerable nature of my being love what it loved. Not to judge my inclinations toward happiness, or resist the strong, thick tug of what I was pulled to adore.
Through many rounds of trial and error, I have learned again and again that a human and the world are like two magnets. The more I trust my instincts for living, the more I become attuned to the interplay between my magnet and the magnet of the world. Conversely, the less I trust my instincts for living and ignore the pull, the more often these magnets — out of sync with their natural course — alter and trip up the frequency of my life.”
