Wild Geese

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.
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 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

Love,
Sophie

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Compatibility vs. compromise

Relationship compatibility is a very complex web of factors. The biggest issues are seemingly (and in no particular order): Sex, money, parenting, religion, politics ... and did I mention sex? Incompatibility in any one of these realms, even in the most idyllic of relationships, can break a couple up bitterly. Why is it that we don't require that high level of compatibility with nonromantic/nonsexual relationships? Because these things matter less. And we're willing and able to extend more compromise for lower levels of compatibility. Have you ever noticed the ratio balance? The higher the compatibility level, the less compromise is required. The lower the compatibility, the higher the level of compromise. How much is too much?

Can there be a such thing as TOO MUCH compatibility? I believe there can be. If you measure compatibility as sameness. But is it? Maybe compatibility is NOT sameness, but rightness. In other words, a couple of people who are so identical in expression, habit, spirit, thought and action don't challenge each other, don't stimulate each other, don't teach each other and may soon stagnate in boredom and listlessness. At the same time, not enough sameness can have equally erosive effects. So how is true compatibility measured? In balance.

The key elements required, in my estimation are: intimacy, communication, tolerance and self-reliance. I can't imagine a successful intimate relationship without each. The balance is dynamic. It's in constant adjustment to environment, to the cycles of time, etc. So there is no one particular true formula for that, the recipe changes with the conditions. And you have to change with it.


Love,
Sophie

Send your comments, questions, insights, situations, feedback, problems, perspectives, prognoses, prophecies and poetry to: sophieseriously(at) gmail.com