"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."
— Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"
Sit with those words for a moment. Let them land somewhere in your body.
Mary Oliver wrote this poem as an antidote to the relentless pressure to be better, to fix ourselves, to earn our place in the world through suffering and self-denial.
"You do not have to be good."
Not good enough. Not productive enough. Not disciplined enough. Just... you. The soft animal of your body, doing what soft animals do: resting, eating, breathing, loving.
How different would this year feel if you believed that?
What if your only job wasn't to improve yourself, but to simply let yourself exist—fully, messily, imperfectly?
Try this reflection:
Read the poem again, slowly. Out loud if you can.
Then ask yourself: What does the soft animal of my body love?
Not what should you love. Not what's productive or impressive. What does your body actually, genuinely love?
Write it down. That's your real compass for the year.
When the spark feels gone and you've forgotten what you love, Inner Spark Recovery can help reignite it gently.