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Description
Mary Oliver’s quotation regarding my “one wild and precious life” is fascinating because it culturally implies that something must be world changing. The question challenges individuals to arise from the rough and become diamonds. However, the most precious thing in the world has no monetary value. It is available to every individual on this planet. Oxygen provides us life, allows us to proceed with day-to-day living. It is funny to think, then, that we value diamonds as a rare commodity when, honestly, the only value they have is what humanity assigns to them.

Oxygen molecules are as mechanics and electricians, people who never make the headlines for corporate scandals, but provide the basic necessities to keep our economy, our government running smoothly, spinning together and maintaining the very fabric of our culture. I would like to think that the gas oxygen even behaves wildly. Whereas we know that gas behaves according to set principles such as Boyle’s Law and Dalton’s Law, it is these same molecules that cause a balloon to expand—moving about with energy so intense, that they bounce off the interior surface of the balloon, causing it to expand or maintain expansion.

Diamonds, on the other hand, are rigid. They assume a crystalline form. Beautiful as the rock might be, they are made of the second-most common element on the planet Earth: carbon. The most common element in mankind is a desire for self-preservation, a lust for power and attention, an inherent pride. Presidents and CEO’s have this common element, but at the same time, they have the rigid matrix like crystals to which they must conform. They cannot move about wildly and beautifully like molecules of O2.

There is honor in mechanical work. It allows a working father to earn money for his children. It allows a woman to go to school. And it is freedom. Mechanics and teachers and construction workers are always in demand, because they are essential, and they can therefore move about to constantly maintain the expansion of society. I would like to be so free, so essential and so precious as to have that ability: to move about for society’s sake, even in the event of going unnoticed.

To that end, it is fitting that I see myself as a writer. An author of fiction paints portraits of society’s past, present and future. He offers up ideas and views, challenges the status quo. Even in realist novels like those of Cunningham or Delillo, the stark grayness of the piece puts society in perspective, sub textually asking that people become more than this novel by which they are simultaneously intrigued and detached. Non-fiction authors from science to philosophy offer such paintings of reality to challenge another generation—science to research further, to find cures for disease; philosophy to step up and answer age-old questions.

Writers are slave solely to their pen. For me, it is essential that I may be as wild and free as oxygen, while being as precious in breathing intellectual and spiritual life into the world at large. Perhaps it is egotistical, but plainly speaking, it is all I have ever really wanted to do. My “wild and precious life” may only be called that if I am both free and valuable.

Description
Mary Oliver’s quotation regarding my “one wild and precious life” is fascinating because it culturally implies that something must be world changing. The question challenges individuals to arise from the rough and become diamonds. However, the most precious thing in the world has no monetary value. It is available to every individual on this planet. Oxygen provides us life, allows us to proceed with day-to-day living. It is funny to think, then, that we value diamonds as a rare commodity when, honestly, the only value they have is what humanity assigns to them.

Oxygen molecules are as mechanics and electricians, people who never make the headlines for corporate scandals, but provide the basic necessities to keep our economy, our government running smoothly, spinning together and maintaining the very fabric of our culture. I would like to think that the gas oxygen even behaves wildly. Whereas we know that gas behaves according to set principles such as Boyle’s Law and Dalton’s Law, it is these same molecules that cause a balloon to expand—moving about with energy so intense, that they bounce off the interior surface of the balloon, causing it to expand or maintain expansion.

Diamonds, on the other hand, are rigid. They assume a crystalline form. Beautiful as the rock might be, they are made of the second-most common element on the planet Earth: carbon. The most common element in mankind is a desire for self-preservation, a lust for power and attention, an inherent pride. Presidents and CEO’s have this common element, but at the same time, they have the rigid matrix like crystals to which they must conform. They cannot move about wildly and beautifully like molecules of O2.

There is honor in mechanical work. It allows a working father to earn money for his children. It allows a woman to go to school. And it is freedom. Mechanics and teachers and construction workers are always in demand, because they are essential, and they can therefore move about to constantly maintain the expansion of society. I would like to be so free, so essential and so precious as to have that ability: to move about for society’s sake, even in the event of going unnoticed.

To that end, it is fitting that I see myself as a writer. An author of fiction paints portraits of society’s past, present and future. He offers up ideas and views, challenges the status quo. Even in realist novels like those of Cunningham or Delillo, the stark grayness of the piece puts society in perspective, sub textually asking that people become more than this novel by which they are simultaneously intrigued and detached. Non-fiction authors from science to philosophy offer such paintings of reality to challenge another generation—science to research further, to find cures for disease; philosophy to step up and answer age-old questions.

Writers are slave solely to their pen. For me, it is essential that I may be as wild and free as oxygen, while being as precious in breathing intellectual and spiritual life into the world at large. Perhaps it is egotistical, but plainly speaking, it is all I have ever really wanted to do. My “wild and precious life” may only be called that if I am both free and valuable.