Healing Words: The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
As a psychologist, I believe that words have the power to comfort us during difficult times. Today, I want to introduce you to the poem “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry.
The poem begins with a description of someone whose internal experience is filled with despair and anxiety about the future, the kind of anxiety many of us are all too familiar with, the kind of anxiety that keeps many of us up at night. The poem's protagonist finds peace in nature and draws inspiration from "wild things" such as the wood drake and the great heron, birds whose brains naturally keep them planted in the present. Our brains, on the other hand, create suffering by projecting us into imagined future worst-case scenarios.
Wendell Berry describes anticipatory grief, the experience of dreading a real or imagined loss, which of course doesn't give us any control over losing our dear ones but does take us away from our ability to stay connected with them in the present.
This poem helps us to tap into self-compassion by encouraging us to be mindful of our present moment experience and reminding us of our interconnectedness with other beings. The poem's protagonist achieves a feeling of calm by mindfully bringing his attention to his surroundings: the birds, the water and the sky. He uses his senses to ground himself in the present moment thereby gaining freedom from his discursive mind. While this kind of mindful presence may only be accessible to most of us for several moments at a time, for those precious moments we too can be peaceful and free to just be.
And now, I invite you to slowly and mindfully savor the poem.
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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