Why Sunsets Are Too Short

In Response to Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"

Photo by Derek Gordon, Dreamstime

You can tell an amount about a person based on the choice of photo for their phone’s lock screen. Some adorn their phone with pictures of family and friends, clearly displaying their love for people and community. Others may favor a tranquil landscape or sunset, perhaps seeking refuge from an otherwise frantic digital world on their device. Showcasing a level of vainness, some people may fix a selfie, and nothing else, as their phone background.

My phone has endured many different iterations of these (except the selfie), but its current lock screen has been static for some time. It’s a screenshot of a poem I was introduced to in college, “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver. The poem reads as follows:

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 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.

---

About two-thirds of my time in college was spent behind a desk in my childhood bedroom. 

During my sophomore year - which is hard to even discern due to the terms blending together - I applied to the major I sought to study at my university. Even though communication is considered an “easy” major at many schools, the entrance to it at my slightly competitive university had gotten increasingly selective. My admission into the major was largely hinging on a personal statement essay detailing why I wanted to study communication.

Wanting to ensure I had plenty of time to work on this important paper, I began writing my personal statement months before the submission deadline. After a week or two, I landed on a pretty solid structure. And after several more weeks of sharing it with peer editors and friends, I landed on a draft that I considered to be final. 

Yet, there were still several months between me and the deadline.

Upon completing a final draft, plenty of people likely would have closed out of that Google doc and moved on to something else. Started another project. Spent time with family and friends. Taken a walk outside.

But while in the trenches of the COVID-19 pandemic, lacking few activities to do outside my home, my perfectionist tendencies intensified. Even though I knew this was a final draft, I looked at it again and again. Every single night. Reading it in my head, reading it out loud, often for hours on end. In search of something, anything, to change - a comma, an adjective, a sequencing defect.

It wasn’t that I thought the essay needed that much editing per se. Rather, I felt like keeping myself busy - keeping my eyes passing over the words, the document open on my computer - would somehow make it better. If I went to all the trouble and sacrificed all of my evenings, it would somehow improve. Without even actually changing anything.

This type of thinking is one I battled against a lot throughout my academic career. Instead of placing trust in myself, and celebrating the great work I produced, I would often trouble myself to unnecessary ends. A way of rationalization I now consider “empty productivity” - keeping your mind busy for the sake of it, without actually doing anything of substantive quality. Working harder rather than smarter. Valuing quantity over quality.

It’s definitely not a sentiment that I conjured out of thin air. It’s woven throughout many parts of American culture - producing more and more, often, and sometimes intentionally, at the expense of quality in an effort to sell. More hours logged in at the office is seen as good, even if it just means twiddling your thumbs in a cubicle.

Iteration is a part of most creative processes, fine-tuning and tweaking work until it reaches a final form you’re satisfied with. And there also comes a point when the final form needs to be final - I hadn’t so much as changed a punctuation mark in my essay and still felt the need to mull it over hours upon hours each evening until my brain felt satisfyingly scrambled.

Photo by Jan Ranft on Unsplash

Like many, the moments of refuge I found during the pandemic were spent outside. In the lush springs of western Washington, I found my eyes filling with wonder as I glanced up at the bright blue skies, and felt my lungs fill with energy as I breathed in the fresh air. Felt stability in my joints as I walked past sturdy trees. Experienced swelling in my chest as I glided by an ombré pattern of brightly colored hydrangeas poking out of neighbors’ yards. This neighborhood I had known my whole life transformed into somewhat of a paradise.

I never understood why my parents sat and watched the sunset as a kid.

Wherever we were - in our backyard or on a beach - they would take as long as thirty minutes to sit still. Sometimes not talking to each other at all as they watched the sky undergo a metamorphosis. As a squirmy child, this experience felt as tedious as watching a caterpillar weave its cocoon and emerge as a butterfly.

My personal statement ended up being a success and I was admitted to my major. Did each frantic, tear-stained re-read lead to that accomplishment? It’s hard to know.

What’s easy to know is that during each re-read, somewhere in the world, the sky was putting on a light show. Thunderstorms cracked. Waves crashed. Animals lived and died.

Now, at times, I wish the sunset took even longer.

Photo by Raymond Kotewicz on Unsplash