“You do not have to be good. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
by Mary Oliver, Wild Geese”
A quiet truth this week
We are not our bodies. We think we are, and that's where most of our suffering comes from. We are something prior to the body, prior to the ache, prior to the changing form.
But the body is still our companion through this life. The only one we get. And with any good companion, you listen to it. You nourish it as it gets older. Not because you owe it. Because it has stayed with you.
The honest bit out loud
This morning, like most mornings, I knew the second I moved my arms it was going to hurt. I lay there under the quilt for a minute, putting it off, because once you start the day the day has started. My shoulders. My elbows. Five minutes after I'd shifted around they would settle, but I didn't want those five minutes.
You probably have your own version of that moment. The body that aches before you've even asked anything of it. The first stretch that tells you what kind of day you're going to negotiate with.
For years I treated mine as the enemy. Letting me down. Betraying me. Sometimes I even wanted a different body, a better one. I think a lot of us do, especially as we get older, especially when something has changed and the old contract doesn't quite hold.
I was recording the podcast and made me think of an ancient violin. As it gets older it doesn't play badly, it plays differently. You handle it more carefully. You check the wood. You learn what it needs. And in return it plays a tune nothing new could play, because nothing new has lived through what it's lived through.
That, I think, is what to do with the body you wake up in. Listen to it the way you would listen to a violin you respect. It isn't betraying you. It's been carrying you all along.
A small practice this week
Tomorrow morning, before you move, lie still for one slow breath. Notice what hurts. Notice what doesn't. Then ask, what do you need today? You may not get a clear answer. The asking is the practice.
This week, I will listen to my body before I argue with it.
Practice with me
New meditation: A Morning Meditation for the Body You Wake Into. A gentle, lying-down practice for the moment before the day begins.
New podcast episode: Waking Up to Body Betrayal: How to Find Peace in the Pain. On the soldiers inside you, the difference between pain and the story you add, and the ancient violin you wake into.
Be gentle with yourself this week. The body you wake into is not your enemy. It is the only one you have, and it has done more for you than you know.
Much love, Steven
If you would like to support, listen to the podcast, or just say hello: stevenwebb.uk
With gratitude to everyone who supported me with a coffee recently: Sin, Ellen, Dominique, Adam, Annie, Joe, Sujata, Senga, Jack, Glenn, Denise, Laurie, Audra, Rosie, Laura, Kasia, Megan, Alison, Mallory, Elizabeth, Stefan, Barb, Cheryl, Katarzyna, Jill, Tracey, Hannah, Emmanuelle, Rita, Julie, Daniel, María. It means more than you know. And there are a few others, the anonymous ones and those on Insight Timer.
The poem from the quote. I've included it because it's one of my favourite.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
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.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.