One Wild and Precious Life

Mary Oliver’s lesson in stillness for an achievement-driven campus.

At HBS, we are all familiar with the question, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” For over 20 years, HBS students have responded to this question as part of the Portrait Project. The project shines a light on our incredible classmates, showcasing their stories, motivations, and goals. Excerpted from Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day,” the question relates deeply to HBS’s mission of educating leaders who will make a difference in the world. In short, it urges us to get to work. But as we set out on the busy and overwhelming fall semester, I want to dive deeper into the message of the poem in its entirety. 

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) reigned as the best selling poet in the U.S. for many years of her career. A number of us have read her work in school, heard it spoken at weddings or funerals, or seen it reposted on social media. I read her work for the first time in eighth grade and felt the impact in a way that only a 13-year-old can: I was completely floored. Years later, I bought a volume of her book, The Wild Geese, as a Christmas present for a friend who wanted to start reading poetry. I read the whole volume before I could get it wrapped and found myself returning to one of the first poets I truly loved. 

After her death in 2019, I drove out to Provincetown to visit the home in which she lived with her long-time partner, Molly Malone Cook. While her home no longer stood, the beach behind it was littered with shells washed up from the harbor. It was easy to picture her here given her work’s focus on the interplay between the natural world and human spirit. 

“The Summer Day” is one of her most famous efforts on this theme. It describes a long, solitary walk through the fields around her home and her reflections along the way. She defends her choice to use the day unproductively, arguing that being “idle and blessed” can be a tonic for the spirit akin to prayer. She asks, “what else should I have done?”, forcing perspective on the many tasks she might have prioritized instead. In this sense, the closing question, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, isn’t urging us to achieve more. Instead, it asks us to evaluate our goals and ensure we are making time for our spiritual needs. 

I don’t believe Oliver’s message here is that we shouldn’t be pursuing lofty goals. She was, after all, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But the poem does suggest that slowing down has a value unto itself, giving us perspective on our efforts. This is especially salient for the HBS audience because, in an environment where we are constantly pursuing achievement, “The Summer Day” reminds us to take care of ourselves in the ways we best see fit. 

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 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?

—Mary Oliver

Lydia Bailey (MBA ‘26) has a B.A. in English Literature from Swarthmore College. Prior to HBS, she worked in supply chain optimization at Amazon and volunteered as a wildlife rehabilitator at the Cape Wildlife Center on Cape Cod.