"A Tiny Fraction of the Masses"

On my first day of preschool, I remember wandering around the playground looking for either someone to talk to or a really cool ball to play with. That’s sort of how I am now. Simple and just trying to figure things out. I’d like to say that I’ve changed since college, but I still feel the same with a little more direction and self-confidence gained.

So when asked to explain how I’ve changed since college, I turned to poetry. I’ve always liked the idea that poetry is so dependent on being up to an individual’s interpretation because I think that’s how people’s lives are.

Trapped in skin no longer mine, Filled with the absence of words I didn’t speak.

Then I wondered what would happen if I gave them light, And they grew.

Every spark of what I used to be faded, Until I began to measure who I was in my own thoughts.

Now, I plant for myself, A tiny fraction of the masses.

The first few lines address how I felt like I didn’t really have my own place in the world yet. I had a place according to everyone else’s opinions of me, but it was completely fabricated. People’s perceptions of me in high school were different than how I felt, but I was too timid to actually say anything about it. Then, one day, I woke up and decided to speak up and start doing things for myself rather than others. I was no longer just the homecoming queen or that girl who sings and is really quiet. I had my own thoughts and opinions, and I was vocal about them. I was tired of people just making assumptions about who I was. I planted for myself.

So what changed? I honestly think it was just knowledge and experience. I believe knowledge is a big part of what shapes us in life. The more you know about life, the more you are able to form a truer sense of yourself and your personal opinions and values.

The picture is also a large portion of explaining the full meaning of this piece. The handprint represents tangibility. I’ve always found joy in helping people and seeing not necessarily tangible, but physical results. I want my handprint on something in this life, and the branches that stem out from it are perhaps the means with which I will achieve that. The picture is purposely in black and white to represent how I wasn’t able to meet a middle ground or see the gray area for a while. I was pleasing others and not myself.

Finally, the small figure depicts myself and how I would like to be set apart from the everyone else as my own individual, “a tiny fraction of the masses.” Much like this poem, my journey with personal growth is untitled and unfinished, but it moves forward with purpose. I leave you with this, another poem.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau