“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver

You’ve probably read that quote before; maybe it even inspired you…for a moment. Did it actually change anything in your life though? Did it spur you to action or have you commit fully to a dream?

I didn’t think so. Me neither.

And yet? I love that quote, which is actually the last line of this poem.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Maybe I’m quirky, but it’s the second last line that inspires me, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”

The idea that my life is precious appeals to me, but it’s the reminder that everything dies “and too soon” that inspires me to action.

Consider that you don’t often do what it takes to honour that one wild and precious life. You don’t, and it’s time to tell the truth about that.

You talk about it. A lot.

You make promises and New Year’s resolutions, you join programs and support groups, spend money and waste time.

Now, until I’m on the other side and can share my perspective from the afterlife, I’m pretty sure this life? Is all you’ve got. Right here. Right now. This is it.

It’s not a practice life either.

This. Is. It.

But when you think of your life, doesn’t it seem infinite, like you have all the time in the world?

Except, you don’t.

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