Who Deserves to Live Well?

me and wymaya in San MigYesterday I climbed the steps to my writing garret to face another many hours of working on my book proposal. I’m almost finished with it–well, with the draft that will go to the editor/coach before coming back to me for MORE many hours of work. At any rate, before I could even sit down at my desk, a little yellow Post-it note caught my eye. On it was scribbled, “Who deserves to live well?” Although it was in my handwriting, I didn’t (and still don’t) remember writing it. More importantly, I can’t imagine what inspired me to write it. It’s not even a real question, what with its snarky allusion to haves and have-nots, and the idea that some people have a worth that exceeds others’ and that this somehow makes them more meritorious of living well–whatever that even means. Was this why I wrote it? As a reminder that there can be no judgement when it comes to the question of deserving to live well, and that includes no judgements against the self? As my husband has pointed out to me time and again, I’m of the mind that I must earn what others unquestioningly take: vacations, a helping of pie, the right to watch a movie after dinner instead of returning to my book proposal. Maybe this was truly a “note to self,” a rhetorical question meant to wake me up, remind me what’s what, fend off the usual crushing self-judgment with which I often approach my work, and my play–my life. Who deserves to live well? Maybe the emphasis wasn’t meant to be on  deservingness, but on living well. Maybe the point of the note had nothing to do with passing or not passing judgement, but was instead about embracing the life that is neither earned nor presented, but just is. Here I offer a Mary Oliver poem:

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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