Mary Oliver: 'The Journey'

 I am interested in people like the Quakers who try to hear the still small voice.

To many, it’s the voice of God, the voice Elijah heard when he was standing on the mountain. But others hear the voice of their higher nature or better self. Artists listen for their muses. When I was about 6, my mother said that my conscience — which I took to be a pesky version of the still small voice — would speak to me often, given my propensity for mischief.

Poets usually do better than the philosophers with topics like this, and I like Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey.” It begins:

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and

began,

though the voices around you 

kept shouting

their bad advice —

Sometimes, to hear your own quiet voice, you have to get away from people. The journey Oliver is talking about begins in solitude. She finds this: 

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and 

deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do —

determined to save

the only life that you could

save.

Source: You can find the complete poem here:

http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_thejourney.html