Today the poet, Mary Oliver died. I don’t read much poetry and until today, the only words I knew of hers were these two lines:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
But today I finally read the poem from where those lines are from:
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
And so I did not realize that this poem was about a grasshopper and about how to be idle and to be blessed.
Which makes me think that this is a poem might also be about Aesop’s fable, The Ant and Grasshopper
The fable concerns a grasshopper (in the original, a cicada) that has spent the summer singing while the ant (or ants in some versions) worked to store up food for winter. When that season arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and begs the ant for food. However, the ant rebukes its idleness and tells it to dance the winter away now.
Wikipedia.
What is the morale of the story? Who is right? The ant or the grasshopper?
AND FOR DOG’S SAKE, DO NOT ASK OR LOOK AT QUORA OR YOU WILL READ ANSWERS LIKE
From what I remember of the ant and the grasshopper, is the ant is hard working all year round building his house with his community and gathering food and resources and the grasshopper likes to jump around, playing in the meadow enjoying himself. When Winter comes, Ant is prepared and ready to get through it. Grasshopper, is not. The message is that hard, steady work pays off, and jumping around, simply for enjoyment, does not.
I think this way of thinking is dated. Our economy no longer supports slow, steady efforts that pay big dividends. It used to be that one got a job and worked till retirement and then got a pension for the rest of one’s life. This is no longer true. One needs imagination and entrepreneurial skills to be successful today, so maybe finding your passion by jumping around the meadow, and identifying what makes one happy is a good exercise.
Instead, consider this answer:
Or this one:
Or this one: The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.