🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away…
WILD GEESE—or when feeling stuck is part of the process 🌿
🌻 (…) 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. 🌻
—Mary Oliver
🌱 Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
If you’re thinking about a career change or are in the middle of one, you may recognise this particular kind of despair.
- The despair of feeling stuck in a hamster wheel and seeing no way out.
- The despair of being in a fog, not knowing where to go next.
- The despair of looking for a job in an unforgiving market, with no end in sight.
- The despair of being 40 or 50 and still not knowing what you want to be when you grow up.
It can feel as though your life has stopped moving.
As though everyone else is progressing, while you’re running hard just to remain in the same place.
Movement beneath the surface
But Oliver’s repeated “Meanwhile” invites a different way of looking at that stuckness: Even when we think we’re stuck, there’s movement.
Just because movement is not visible to us doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
A career transition can be like that.
On the outside, it may look as though nothing is changing.
- You may still be in the same job,
- going to the same meetings to have the same old conversations,
- sending the same applications,
- having the same doubts,
- waking up with the same questions.
But underneath, Oliver tells us:
🌱 The world goes on
—and something is always shifting.
- An old idea of success may be loosening.
- Your definition of who you are, and what you want, may be shifting.
This void you find yourself in right now is a fertile void: the space in which new life can finally form.
The chrysalis
Chrysalises have always fascinated me. In fact, they’ve become a metaphor for how I understand career and life transitions:
Transitions are the chrysalis from which new life can form.
As a child, I used to wonder what was happening to the caterpillar inside. After all:
- It’s just there.
- It doesn’t move.
- It doesn’t eat.
- Is it aware that its body is reorganising itself inside its shell?
- Is it aware that it’s using stored energy to break down and rebuild much of its caterpillar body into something utterly new?
This biological process is called “metamorphosis” because the transformation is so complete that what emerges is unrecognisable from what came before.
The same can happen during a career or life transition.
That is why the line:
🌱 the world offers itself to your imagination
feels like the poem’s punchline.
Your transition is not about what you already know. It’s about what might be possible, while trusting that something may still be making its way towards you.
When we’re exhausted, disappointed or afraid, we often make decisions only on the evidence in front of us.
- The job market says no.
Our experience is too specific or too broad.
Our age feels like a disadvantage.
Our confidence has been worn down by rejection. And the fog keeps so much out of sight.
But if we allow ourselves to welcome the fog and the void as fertile ground for metamorphosis, the waiting and the apparent lack of movement become more bearable.
And we may become able to consider an alternative view:
☀️ What if I’m not behind, but in the middle of becoming?
Harsh and exciting
The call of the wild geese is
🌱 harsh and exciting.
Harsh—because transformation is rarely easy or comfortable. It’s frustrating, risky, scary and full of uncertainty.
Exciting—because every transition carries the possibility of becoming something new.
Like the caterpillar, we may not yet be able to see what is taking shape. But something is happening inside the apparent stillness of the chrysalis.
📌 So, if you’re feeling stuck in your career or life in general, remember:
the absence of visible movement is not proof that nothing is changing or moving.
You’re standing in the midst of your own fertile void.
So, take heart (and if you can: rejoice), for metamorphosis is in the making.
🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋
With love,
Dina 🫶🏽
Resources:
- Read Mary Oliver’s full poem “Wild Geese” here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oliver
- This week’s song is an instrumental piece by Philip Glass called METAMORPHOSIS (1988). It’s 33 minutes long, and its repetitive, slowly shifting music evokes the spirit of the poem and this week’s reflections. I’d even encourage you to play it while you’re reading this blog post.
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