“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” —Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver's question, in the last stanza of her beautiful poem "A Summer's Day," haunts many of us as we journey deeper into the second half of our lives. For Diana Nyad, it became an obsession. At the age of 28, she failed in her attempt to swim more than 100 miles from Cuba to Florida.
Facing her mortality at the age of 60, as we all do, she was determined to do something with her wild and precious life - to finish what she had started at 28. Four years later, after four more failed attempts, she became the first person ever to swim the 100 miles unassisted from Cuba to Key West, Florida. She did that at age 64.
So I ask you, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Most of us won't answer that question with a superhuman feat like Diana Nyad's, but too many people don't ask it as they watch each day of their wild and precious life slip away.
When I was 78 (I hope you live long enough to say that), I sat in a circle with Chip Conley and sixteen other people. Chip asked me how much of my adult life was left. I replied, "I don't know, but probably not a lot." He smiled as if he was thinking, "Yeah, that's what everybody thinks."
He then proceeded to help us all see how much time we had left. He asked me how long I expected to live. I thought about it for a moment and speculated that I would probably live to be 98. He calculated that if my adult life began at age 18, and I lived to be 98, I had 80 years of my adult life available to me. At age 78, I had already used 60 of those years, but still had 25%, or 20 years, of my one wild and precious life ahead of me.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American Astrophysicist and writer, once suggested that the moon landing might have played a critical role in the creative development of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. In their early teens, it planted an idea about the power of technology in their minds that had not been there previously. Once an idea has entered our consciousness, it expands our internal universe, even if we reject it. Chip Conley planted a thought-provoking idea in my head, but it also created a dilemma.
They say that we change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change. My life of sameness wasn't satisfying, but it wasn't painful enough to push me towards making changes. I didn't want to go back to that mode of striving, surviving, and competing, but I was content with a modest income and had most of the things I truly needed in my life.
Mary Oliver's question was starting to irritate me. Did I have to do anything with the rest of my life? Why couldn't I simply pass the time satisfying my five senses? It seemed like that was what most people my age were doing.
Once an idea enters our consciousness, our internal universe expands even if we reject the idea. My internal universe was expanding, and I started living with that question.
“We create our lives by the questions we ask” —Nancy Kline
Mary Oliver’s question combined with Chip Conley’s revelation that I still had 25% of my life ahead of me started me on a journey to write the next chapter of my life. I took an inventory of the times in my life when I felt most alive, engaged, useful, and purposeful. I discovered some gifts that I had that could be used in the service of other people even at my age, and maybe because of my age. “I’m too old” was no longer an excuse not to do the things I was still capable of doing.
We all want to be useful, but the culture pushes us out of the game and into the stands to be spectators. There’s nothing wrong with being a spectator unless there’s some vague feeling that you could be doing more to share your gifts with others. Do you have an imaginary page in your mind with two columns, one with a heading that says, “I’m glad I did” and the other with a heading that says, “I wish I had?” If your “I wish I had” column is longer than your “I’m glad I did” column, maybe it’s time to ask yourself, “What is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?”
So interesting. Thank you. Love Mary Oliver. I am 78 right now and went to Modern Elder Academy a few months ago. Something that happened to me recently, all good, I took on responsibility for a rather large, complicated, multi-layered project as a volunteer for a community service organization. The longer I worked in that capacity, the more I realized it involved many personalities, many opinions, significant amounts of time, and much coordination. I made the commitment and felt like I was "stuck with it" for one year. A friend who had served in the same capacity for the previous year called me one day. He asked how it was going and I said something like: not good. He said: if you decide you signed on to something that is not workable for you, the committee can find another volunteer. I talked to some else who said: how long do you have? I said: about twenty years. She asked: what do you want to do with those twenty years? I thought for ten seconds and said: not this. She said: ok, there's your answer. And it was. So, finding out what I do NOT want to do clears the decks for something I do want to do.
Thank you! This hit home: Mary Oliver's question was starting to irritate me. Did I have to do anything with the rest of my life? Why couldn't I simply pass the time satisfying my five senses? It seemed like that was what most people my age were doing. (Yes, and -- by the way, I ventured into a writing class this month. Our first poem to study? Mary Oliver's A Summer's Day -- of course.)