“What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don’t waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In wildness, truth.”
– Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey
Much of the work of therapy roots back to a dance between our requisite domestication and our interminable wildness.
Perhaps this is as it should be.
We are uniquely challenged among the species on our planet: graced with the ability to thwart our wild inclinations, to tame ourselves enough to question the meaning of our lives, to study the stars and posit the beginning of our galaxy, to capture the beauty of a moment in words and paint, all while retaining our deepest sense of belonging to grass, earth and water.
We are both: wild and tame. We live along a continuum, a blending of deep roots and the refined buds of possibility reaching skyward. It is maybe there, in the overlap, where we find wonder, bliss, and our inner genius.
I write this essay as rain pours down, the sky never quite becoming light after a long night of wind and restless sleep. I donn the first sweater in this seasonal shift into dark evenings and cold, naked trees.
I long to curl up in my bed, and simultaneously long to remain in yesterday, when I walked for seven miles of green earth, the naked skin of my arms warmed by the sun, when I was light, electric and hungry for life.
What a difference a season can make. How quickly that season can take hold within.
Listening to Know My Name by Chanel Miller as I finally leave my home and drive through the rain, she describes resilience as birds migrating in a v formation. The bird flying out front is in the most difficult position, taking the brunt of the wind while the others draft the broken current. When the leader is exhausted, she drifts to the back to rest. They take turns. It is the only way to make the journey.
Our wild bodies know when it is time to rest, time to nest, time to rely on others to ease our path through the wind.
The tamed part of me can devalue an intuitive call to scale back expectations, to respond to the slower current of the day, of the season. The wild part creates a nest of warm blankets, cracks the window to embrace the sounds and smells, and sips hot tea in between non-negotiables.
May we embrace both the wild and tame within, discovering the emergent middle ground where the two converge to magnify our innate talents and truths into purpose and meaningful becoming.
“Wildness is the universal songline, sung in green gold, which we recognize the moment we hear it. What is wild is what drives the honeysuckle, what wills the dragonfly, shoves the wind and compels the poem. Wildness is insatiable for life; neither truly knows itself without the other.”