“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
My grandmother was born in a remote village at the dawn of the twentieth century. Married in her late teens, she was widowed in her early twenties, with two young sons. She remarried a widower with seven children, taking on this responsibility in a world of subsistence agriculture. She bore four more, a fifth who died within two months, and lastly my father. In her later years one eye was occluded by a cataract; the second was blinded by a cow's errant horn. She walked barefoot, wore a plain white garment, lived much of her days in a one-room house. And in her old age she was asked if she had ever experienced anything unbearable in her life. Her answer was immediate, and unequivocal: Nothing at all.

So I will reflect, and find joy in such simplicity. I will recognize that the unheralded and seemingly ordinary is often far more worthy than the celebrated. I will test the hypothesis that living without formal power has greater potential for changing the world than the grasping that often defines us. I will care less about temporal things and rely more on daily grace, because it is sufficient. If I am strong enough I will bear hardships ungrudgingly, acknowledging that mine have always been trivial. I will seek the elemental beauty in life and orient myself accordingly, because I know it can be done.

Somehow, some way, I will live worthy of this heritage.

— Jason George

The Portrait Project

Each year we ask our classmates a straightforward, simple question taken from the lines of a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Mary Oliver. We share with you intimate and candid responses to this question, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Concept and photography: Tony Deifell, MBA '02

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