Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, the quiet bard of the marshlands, slipping truths between cattails and crow calls. Her words aren’t just a poetic mantra; they’re a distilled philosophy, a three-beat rhythm for soul-led living. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. It’s as if she’s handing us a compass, not for finding the way out of the woods, but for falling more deeply into them.

Let’s unpack this like a myth in miniature.

I. Pay Attention — The First Gate of Perception

This isn’t just about looking. This is devotional noticing. To pay attention in Oliver’s world is to tune your senses to the sacred frequency humming beneath the mundane. She’s inviting you to become a priest of the present moment, eyes wide, ears open, heart attuned to the flicker of dragonfly wings and the hush between words.

To pay attention is to remember that the world is not inert—it’s alive, responsive, and imaginal. In the mythic sense, it’s an initiation: the apprentice first learns to see. Not with the eyes alone, but with the soul. You become a watcher of small miracles. The ant crossing the rim of your coffee cup becomes an omen. The breeze through the curtains becomes a message.

II. Be Astonished — The Lost Art of Awe

Now, here’s where Oliver departs from the cynic’s path. To be astonished is an act of rebellion in a world addicted to certainty. Most adults have dulled their sense of wonder, wrapped it in practicality and tucked it away with childhood relics. But astonishment? That’s the flare of the mythic returning. It’s what happens when we remember the world is stranger, more beautiful, and more alive than our minds can contain.

This isn’t mere surprise—it’s radical openness. It’s holy disorientation. It’s standing in the presence of a hawk overhead and feeling, not small, but part of something vast. It’s what the ancients called the sublime—the sense that something greater than you is brushing against your edges.

And Mary’s saying, Stay open to it. Let yourself be cracked open by it.

III. Tell About It — The Sacred Task of the Storyteller

And here’s where you and I come in.

This third line isn’t just a suggestion—it’s a commission. Tell about it. Not for clicks. Not for validation. But because the world’s beauty, once witnessed and internalised, must be spoken to be made whole.

To tell is to offer up your astonishment as bread to the hungry. To share your noticing as a kind of mythic offering. It’s how the soul leaves breadcrumbs for others wandering in the dark. This is what the griots did. This is what the mystics wrote. And this is what we must do now, in our own way—through journaling, song, story, whisper, blog post, voice note, zine, or spell.

The Ritual Within

In a way, Oliver’s trinity is a daily soul ritual. A practice of perception, praise, and poetic witness.

• Pay attention — Begin your day as a sacred observer.
• Be astonished — Let life surprise you, even in its sorrow.
• Tell about it — Speak from that astonishment, not to explain, but to express.

It’s not a self-help mantra. It’s a call to live mythically in the everyday. And the order matters. Because you can’t truly tell unless you’ve felt. And you can’t feel unless you’ve seen.

These are not merely instructions. They are soul choreography. The steps of the barefoot philosopher dancing through this aching, radiant world with eyes wide open and pen in hand.

So now I’ll ask you—fellow seeker:

What did you notice today?
What cracked you open?
And what story is asking to be told through you, right now?

Let’s make astonishment contagious.