September 12, 2026

Live Like The Squirrel

Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example - I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Hikmet wrote this poem while serving a long prison sentence in Turkey for his political convictions, cut off from the ordinary freedoms of daily life. Instead of turning bitter, he looked to the natural world for instruction, choosing the squirrel as his teacher: a small animal that works, eats, and survives without asking what it all means. His body was locked away, but his attention stayed fixed on how creatures outside the cell simply live. The image endures because it strips away the search for grand purpose and asks us to be as fully present in our physical, animal lives as any squirrel is in its tree.