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Think you need to hustle and accomplish more to make use of your one wild and precious life? Let's take another look at that. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hey friends, it's Alyssia and welcome or welcome back to Relish. Today's clickbait episode is a little bit different. I've done something similar before and many of you seem to enjoy it. So, I wanted to share another poem. This
is another Mary Oliver poem and I'll also share some of my reflections. And I'd like to just read the poem first before we do anything else. This is 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's moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down? who's 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've 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?
Mary Oliver. Okay, so there's so much here. Although I will give again that little disclaimer. This is not a literary analysis. I'd like to just share how I relate to this poem and why it feels so uh aligned with what we talk about here on Relish. And I want to start with the lines at the end. Actually, you've probably heard this line before. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? That famous line. And it's a beautiful line, but it gets extracted. It gets put on pillows at HomeGoods and quotes on Instagram. It gets used as motivation. And almost always it gets interpreted as what are you going to do with your life?
What are you going to make of it? What are you going to achieve? But I feel that reading that interpretation completely misses the point of the poem. What strikes me about this poem about summer day is how utterly ordinary it is. This poem is not about achievement. It's not about purpose. It's not about becoming anything. It's about paying attention, being curious, letting yourself be amazed by something as small and seemingly ordinary as a grasshopper. Who made the world? Who made the grasshopper?
She asks questions. those questions not to answer them but to open to wonder. This poem is a meditation. It is like a mindfulness practice in poetic form as many Mary Oliver's poems are. Of course, she's not floating away into abstraction. She stays right here. The grasshopper eating the sugar out of my hand. The feeling of kneeling in the grass, the heat of the day, the simple act of noticing. This is embodiment. This is presence. This is the opposite of living in your head. Nothing is missing in this moment she's describing. Nothing needs to be optimized or changed. And so that ending, the final line, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your
one wild and precious life? When you read that line in the context of the entire poem, to me, it becomes clear Oliver is not asking, "What are you going to accomplish?" She's asking, "Are you here for it?" The entire poem leading up to that question is about attention and aliveness and wonder and being present to what's already happening. The question is not an invitation to hustle. It is an invitation to notice. Your life is already wild and precious. The grasshopper is enough. This moment is enough. You are enough already, right now, even if you never achieved another
thing. This is why the poem feels so aligned with relish. We live in a culture that's constantly asking, "What's next? What's your purpose? How will you use and reach your potential?" And Mary Oliver is quietly asking something far more radical. Can you pay attention to here and now? Because presence is participation in life. Attention is devotion to the sacredness of your existence. Being here is living and it's enough. Maybe you don't need to do anything. For me, this poem is a relief. It takes the pressure off. It lets me stop performing my life and reminds me I don't have to earn my worth. I don't have to justify my existence. I don't
have to turn my life into a project. I can just kneel down in the grass and notice and be alive. I can just be. And that's enough. Our culture often pulls these lines, these end lines out of context and in doing so distorts the whole intention of the poem. That same tendency is a part of the conditioning that keeps so many of us stuck on that hamster wheel. So the next time you see that famous line on a pillow or a post or a quote or whatever, I hope that you can reconnect to or remember the rest of the poem. And maybe you ask yourself, am I actually here for my one wild and precious life right now? I'd like to
read the poem once more. And so maybe uh even just close your eyes and let it wash over you. Take it in. the summer day. Who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean. The one who's flung herself out of the grass. The one who's eating sugar out of my hand. Who's moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down? who's 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've 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? Mary Oliver, you don't have to become anything more to belong to this life or to be enough. You just have to be here for it. If this episode resonated, I do hope you'll share it with someone, a friend or maybe someone who needs permission to
slow down and stop hustling. And please also don't forget to subscribe, download, follow the show, all the things. Leave a fivestar rating and review. It really supports our work. All right, I'll see you next time.
