Quote Of The Day By Mary Oliver: 'It Is A Serious Thing Just To Be...'

Mary Oliver, the American poet best known for collections such as "American Primitive" and "House of Light," once said that she was drawn to two things as a child. They were, as she told NPR in 2012, "the natural world and dead poets." That pairing turned out to be a blueprint for her poignant and celebrated deliberations on life.

,Oliver was born in 1935, in Maple Heights on the outskirts of Cleveland. From a young age, she had an affinity for the woods and spent a lot of time there. She took classes at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but didn't finish either. Instead, she moved to Steepletop, a country estate belonging to Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped the late poet's sister sort through her work. Steepletop was where she also met Molly Malone Cook, her partner of nearly 50 years.

Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for "American Primitive," followed by a National Book Award in 1992 for "New and Selected Poems." She rarely sat for interviews, but she did discuss the household she grew up in during a 2011 conversation with Maria Shriver. "I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood," she said. "So, I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation." A rough start, childhood trauma, and a life spent looking closely at the little thing is precisely why Mary Oliver is today's quote of the day.

In her poem "Invitation," Mary Oliver wrote: "It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world."

"Invitation" was included in "Red Bird," Oliver's 12th poetry collection, published in 2009. The poem pauses to watch a flock of goldfinches in a thistle field, deep in a singing contest over who can go highest or lowest. And this line, dropped in the middle, implies that the broken world isn't what stops the morning from being worth something. It is, in essence, the only place the morning ever happens.

The word "serious" here has nothing to do with being solemn. Mary Oliver is aiming for "weighty" and perhaps "consequential." After all, being alive deserves your attention the same way a job or diagnosis does. Then there are the two facts she sets side by side. The morning is fresh; the world is broken. Most of us insist on picking one, but Oliver is offering an alternative that combines the two.

The poem implies that the scene isn't inherently significant. The goldfinches aren't competing for our amusement, but isn't it amazing that we're here to bear witness to it nonetheless? The phrasing "fresh morning" is telling because Oliver isn't talking about the perfect morning or a morning where nothing troubles you. Goldfinches live off thistles and thistles are a symbol poets often use to signal bitterness and hardship. The world is broken, yet the goldfinches sing anyway. 

The broken world shouldn't stop you from making a new morning count because "it is a serious thing just to be alive." We brush aside things we deem unimportant — the afternoon walk, the shared meal, the few minutes spent watching birds. Being alive is one of those things we take for granted. Oliver posits that being alive isn't the small aside underneath the real stuff of your day — the struggles, the triumphs, the hardships, the joys, and the pains. Being alive is the most fundamental aspect of the whole experience. None of the rest can happen without this fact.

• "Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
• "Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts."

• "Two or three times in my life I discovered love. Each time it seemed to solve everything. Each time it solved a great many things but not everything. Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and thoroughly, solved everything."

• "Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable."

• "Attention is the beginning of devotion."