Your Only Escape is What You Create
When the world gets too scary, just make something.
You need an area of your life where you have complete control. No bosses. No opinions. No spouse. Only you. Total dominion. Without this, it is all too easy to be pushed around by the whims of the world.
Poet Mary Oliver, who grew up with a terribly sad, depressed childhood, discovered this at an early age.
In an interview with Brain Pickings, she said this:
“The world of literature — offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy and I ran for it… I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion.”
Spoken like a true poet. Which is to say, almost impossible to understand. What is Mary really getting at?
Oliver is talking about a world where she has complete control. It is separate entirely from the madness of what you see in front of you. You know this “world’s otherness.” It’s the space inside your head, the…
