Romanticising a small life

By Bea mendoza

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

—Mary Oliver, Poem 133: The Summer Day

As a second semester senior barrelling towards graduation and the “real world,” I have had to confront the big question: what do I want to do with my life? I have long thought that I must answer this in a profound way. It has always felt like I had to change the world, and I’ve put colossal pressure on myself to find a “calling” that makes a “difference.”  While I’m lucky to have been so supported throughout my life that I do think I could change the world, I’ve recently had this realisation: what if I don’t? Meaning, what if I don’t change the world? What if I don’t make a significant impact? What if I don’t even want to? 

What if I don’t need to have a large-scale purpose?

When I admit that I am an artist— a poet, a writer, a whatever— I am then asked if I’ve been published, or if I want to, or what I think I’ll do with my art. There’s an assumption that I want to commodify my creations. The truest answer to “what do I want to do with my life?” is “I want to live like and as an artist. I want poetry everywhere. I want to make everything beautiful. I want everything to be beautiful.”, but none of that means that I want to make a living out of being an artist. None of that means that I want to be renowned. Hell, I don’t even much mind if no one ever reads this, or anything else that I make. Maybe it will sting a little bit, but the point first and foremost is that I contributed something to the world, and it need not make the largest ripples, it need not be the biggest, most influential something; it’s enough for one person to read this, it’s enough for one person to remember me, it’s enough for one person to care. 

Believe me, I want to make a difference, but lately the desire to make “worthwhile, purposeful change” has left me so fraught and hopeless. In this world that feels so upside down because of so many near-apocalyptic events, I have become more content with building my most joyful life, and that life is considerably smaller. In my idealised post-graduate life, light spills into the apartment that I share with my three roommates, where the coffee is hot, and the radiator is a little too loud. Every morning, I leave at the same time for my job where what I do matters considerably to maybe two or three people, and every evening I return home at the same time to commiserate with my own feelings. My roommates and I will cook and eat together, and we will talk about little things that matter considerably to the four of us and maybe no one else. Before I sleep, I will consume media that makes me mindful of, and grateful for, my small life. I’ll call my parents more. I’ll rest easily. I’ll wake up and do it all over again, existing quietly within my known circles and blocks. 

This life, however you lead it, is wild, and precious, and ultimately yours. While there is a privilege to this worldview, I still think that, regardless of circumstance, there are beautiful things everywhere, and everyone makes a meaningful contribution to the world by their mere existence. My life, however it takes shape, will be beautiful because it is mine.