I find it amazing how, we, as humans, constantly chase after things so far out of our control. How a person can think so highly of themself as they stand in a shadow. I crave enlightenment to the fact that people willingly watch their life shatter around them like a glass upon the floor. When I walk into a room full of  strangers who talk too long and too much about themselves, my inner Hesse burns like a dying star, and when there is twenty people trying to enter the door as I am attempting to leave, that star dims into Oliver. Sometimes, I feel so uncentered, like my whole world might fly off its axis. In those moments, Mary Oliver is once again found close to my heart. People so often forget the little brush strokes that create the bigger picture, patience, balance, and remaining humble are the things that paint the complicated picture called life.

Without patience comes chaos. If everyone in the world was impatient, we would all starve because food takes too long to make, we would cry every time something fell on the floor. As children, we are frustrated so easily because we can’t wait, we don’t know how to wait so with the patience only a mother could have, we are taught. Taught to take our time because all good things go right along with it. In the poem, “The Summer Day,” Oliver says “I do know how...how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.” This screams patience. I see the fields as life and strolling a leisurely pace. There is no need to  rush because it just makes everything worse when a plan fails to succeed. I remember in middle school I would spend little to no time on my homework because I found it tedious, yet I was devastated when I saw that my grades were terrible. That’s how people choose to do things, they invest no time and expect superb results. If everyone would just slow down, we wouldn’t be so disappointed all the time.

Being humble is being happy. “O you who sit over your full cup and do not drink.” There are people who have everything in life and do not care to indulge in things that seem “below them,” things that everyday people have so much passion for. No one truly enjoys life if they believe the world revolves around them. If in your mind you are the greatest why would you care to engage with someone who wasn’t just as great. Taking time to, as they say, “feel the wind in your hair,” is vital and so is realizing how small you are in this huge world. There’s so much more to life than being the best at everything. It’s the little things that make this life worth living. It’s accepting a compliment gracefully, going out of your way to watch the sunset or noticing the way her mouth curves up when she talks about something she loves. We are all just specks in this huge galaxy, the people who realize this, happen to be the happiest.

Equilibrium over everything. Maintaining balance is doing whatever brings you peace. “Determined to save the only life you could save.” The only path you can follow is your own, but there is a choice of what the path holds. You can strive to the positive or fall to the negative, though that is in the eye of the beholder. If being a bad person brings you peace, go for it. As long as one finds that middle ground, that island in the middle of the storm, then they will be one step closer to living well and content. Life without balance can be compared to a baby without a parental unit because a person becomes lost and confused. When I was a freshman, I was so caught up in the negative aspects of life, I started to lose myself. Everything went wrong. Since I was surrounded by negativity, I felt as if I deserved to be sad. Summer of sophomore year I started striving for all those positive things people dream about though I didn’t forget the negative that plagued me. What I realized is it’s all about limits, knowing when something is smothering you and going out of the way to fix it. Taking bad situations and making something good out of them until you’re exactly where you want to be.

Be patient because as Hesse says, “Life passes like a flash of lightning,” and everyone deserves to slow down and be happy as they can. Staying balanced ensures joy, motivation, and calmness because your life is aligned. Remain humble because life is so much more exciting when you can talk for hours about the way stars looked in the night sky. These three values are the bandages that dress wounds and life seems unlivable without them.