I've re-read it a million times and still can't understand.
"And I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values."
What did she mean by that last line?
by atcam28
47 Comments
We are all just stardust floating through the cosmos. The worst thing we can do is feed our egos. It takes us further away from what we truly are. Nothing really matters. Especially self prescribed beliefs.
Reads to me that she is comparing an infinite world of possibilities and random chance to the simple way we define our lives – right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, etc.
Great quote!
Basically I read it as a humoristic take on humanity.
It is common and logical when we try to figure out the “meaning to our existence and purpose of being” we expand our thinking to find it, and the depths of intellect search the abyss, yet once we find it, it will shape and narrow our thinking, starting a gradual intellectual resurfacing to the shallows of the human condition.
She’s basically saying that at birth all she was, was potential. Now, as an adult, that potential has taken form into a person with beliefs and values, but in realising that end state the potential was lost. Now she can’t be anything, she is what she is.
We’re shaped and molded by external factors all our lives. We never truly have the chance to live outside of confines of the societal structures that guide us through life. Who you are or who you become is a byproduct of every single interaction you’ve ever had. That’s just my interpretation of it, her intent might be something else, who knows. That’s the beauty of prose.
But I love Sylvia, every time I read her work it’s like reading my own thoughts in my diary ❤️
I think what she’s saying is that by realizing your potential you also lose your potential. Once you know who you are you also can no longer be whoever you want to be.
Where is this passage from? It helps to understand it in context.
In my thinking, it means when we realize our potential we simultaneously realize our limitations as well.
So many great answers here. I have nothing to add except that Sylvia Plath has been my literary crush since college. Such an incredible writer
My interpretation is that as we mature we become two dimensional..the values n beliefs are oppressors of the open thought process and the actions it might lead to.. In the end.. We r here for bigger things.. Not just to mould in the obvious.
She is saying there is a disconnect between beliefs and values.
Is this from a book? And what’s the title?
No idea really, but I’ll hazard a guess…..our circumstances and our heredity are a powerful influence on our values: what we choose to make important in our lives….so ultimately, it’s those values that shape our existence
>Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth
That last line is a lament, imo, because of this one…..what could we become if we made different choices?
I think she’s talking about how when we’re born sky is the limit for us, nothing is impossible. But as we grow old we start putting barriers in our mind even if they aren’t really there. The last line signifies just that how the society or much rather the character has successfully managed to fit herself into the mould of society. But in the process of doing that has managed to lose her individuality, her uniqueness and that ‘IT’ factor what made her what she was.
Mans gotta have a code.
I’m not great with reddit formatting but here goes:
I believe you can’t just take this last line alone, she has set up a bittersweet tone to this final line with her previous lines.
“I, too will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by” – Self explanatory beginning, but if looked at through the scope of the entire quote, it is almost defeatist in nature. She states that she was stunted and narrowed, warped by her environment. This finding of beliefs and the way she describes it “I, too…” – as in, “like everyone else”, no originality to it, just fitting in.
“Yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values” – I like this bit. We like to tout that we have values, and we have principles. And as we grow old, we are shaped by our beliefs (which are an extension of our environment), but she takes a different stance to the normal pride people feel when they talk about their beliefs and their standards. She claims that by finding her own beliefs and standards, (once again, she states it in a form that makes you feel it is inevitable) she will actually lose that potential she was born with. The “depth” of her potential will be replaced by the “ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living”. Her beliefs, while a core part of her, will also be the reason she like many others, will live a shallow, narrow life.
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I haven’t read this quote before, but it I find it quite beautiful. The beliefs each and every one of us develops through life, that we take such pride in, can also be shackles that keep us from experiencing the world in many different ways to our own. Our beliefs are no different from choosing a tiny slice of our world, experiencing it, and calling that a full life.
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Just my 2 cents though
The last line reminds me, in a way, of William Blake’s [Proverbs of Hell](https://romantic-circles.org/editions/poets/texts/marriageofheaven.html).
I think therefore I am. The caesura is showing her thought process throughout where she is trying to understand her existence.
This existence has been shaped as she has grown. Now she has reached adulthood she cannot become more- she is , essentially what she is.
That’s my understanding anyway
My interpretation: rigidity is the death. Once you codify your existence through values you lose dimension/passion/curiosity and become judgmental and dull.
Which book?
Was everything at birth and then grew up to find out life is crap
She’s saying the family, society, and culture you are born into shape and ultimately limit your growth. Unless you can see and recognize the blinders these influences place on your perceptions you can never be more than another drop of water in the ocean.
Lost at sea looking to be, defined as a drop for one specific crop.
Nature vs Nurture. Her environment was what defined her values. That set of values will now determine how she lives her life. She went from unlimited options and potential to living a life by rules other people made up before she even existed.
I’m using some terms very lightly (not proofed to be read as a philosophically rigorous set of statements).
I believe she is lamenting the contradiction or dichotomy or paradox at the heart of our existence – that to find a set of fixed beliefs is to fix oneself within those beliefs and lose the freedom that allowed you to find them in the first place.
At birth we are all potential – completely free. After birth we are, first, limited by our environment as we struggle to make sense of the world. And then in our freedom to make sense of the world – to live it – to “be” and give it some kind of structure that can existentially anchor us we lose that freedom, the infinite potential we had at birth. WE become imprisoned by our values.
It is human nature to seek a metaphysical system or “sense” for the world we find ourselves in. By finding some “sense”, a set of values, we lose the infinite potential of our birth. By our birth we become imprisoned.
She despises the values she has settled for. And yet can’t escape their prison.
Trying to simplify that a little:
many people at some point in their life encounter a sense of existential angst -who am I, why am I, what is this world. Our ability to ask these questions comes from something we can’t define – but some label as consciousness.
It’s infinite in it’s possibility – vis a vis our imaginations -what artists can achieve, what engineers or scientists can construct.
However in order to try to settle our existential angst, some people (not all) choose to frame their lives within some kind of value system. This might be a religion. It might be a philosophical approach to life like humanism. She is accepting that she has done just that. But she also accepts that by doing this, she blocks off all the other potential ways that she could live her life. She “imprisons” herself.
She is lamenting that the system she chose to live her life by was dictated by the environment she grew up in and lived in, so even the value system she chose wasn’t her truly free choice and now she has made her choice she has blocked all other choices. She has “died” metaphysically.
It’s a very sad way to look at the world and ones potential in it – as much as I respect Plath and her work, please don’t be persuaded that this is the only way to look at our world.
That life is more complex than can be summed up in a simple set of rules to live by.
Lamenting the lost opportunity and flexibility to experience that which stands outside the boundaries of a self imposed set of values.
As someone who was raised Mormon, and then found my way out well into adulthood, this hits hard. Painfully hard.
Once you believe something you (mostly) lose the ability to believe contradictory things. The ratio of things you *do* believe compared to things you *could have* believed is vanishingly small.
Slapping my personal interpretation on it, this sounds like somebody who got their moral code from the people around them and doesn’t really vibe with it despite ‘agreeing’
A block of marble has the potential to be chisled into almost anything.
Once the carving is done, it is one shape, the billions of other shapes are now impossible.
There are so many great responses. I’ll just add that it reminds me of the saying, “you can be anything, but you cannot be everything.” (I’ve no idea of the source, unfortunately.) Even if each person had boundless potential, you sacrifice vast possibilities when you choose what you want to be or do. Opportunity cost, if you will.
There is still plenty a person can achieve on a lifetime, for sure. But if you’re a musician dedicated to your craft, practicing for countless hours and performing in famous concert halls, you *probably* can’t train rigorously as you chase Olympic gold too. And that’s operating under the assumption said person has the natural ability, discipline, resources, etc. to pursue either one. That’s not on the philosophical level that Plath is in this quote, but it seemed somewhat analogous.
She means that in adopting one set of values, she effectively chooses against all others. Like she voluntarily narrows the scope of her experience and her perspective by placing her existence neatly in a small, labeled box.
I have always been someone who was wary of joining anything, even if that thing was a good benevolent thing. I think it is because even good organisations/groups develop a way of thinking, a culture, that is almost inevitably closed minded to some degree…not intentionally so, but we all like rules, right?
It’s a restatement of life. An untethered bird can fly anywhere. It’s not until one makes a nest that definition begins to take shape. All of life is like this, except the brief moments we experience life through the eyes of a child.
Imagine you’re dating someone. Is it who you will marry? And if not, or if maybe, then every one of those people represent a path, until finally you solidify. You find definition, alone, or maybe with someone. Either way it’s an end to one form of possibility and the introduction to another.
First we move from what I could be into what I am, and from there what I can do, until the candle of life burns low and we’re left staring back over the long road behind. It’s only then we realize all the possibility and potential we had – and most of it unused in all but the rarest of souls.
I think there is probably relevant content that precedes this quote so it might be hard to make as much out of it without that context. She is observing that people, herself included, follow a very narrow path constrained by values, so our behavior is limited to what these values allow. She finds this limiting in the sense that we don’t exist beyond these sets of values, but we could if not for the various forces preventing it.
That is a fantastic quote! Thank you for sharing.
Potential is infinite but values are finite.
By reaching the finite end of a line through the potential possibilities from birth she arrives at a place where infinite potential is no longer possible.
She’s alive and creation comes with endless possibility, but as you become human and grow, you continually get less and less freedom to become anything, and once you decide on a way of living, you’ve narrowed the possibilities even more. You’ve boxed yourself in. You are what you are.
As an adult with values you see all things through those glasses. It’s hard to see them any other way without the hue of that lense tainting it. In that sense you are no longer truly free but enprisoned by the values that have formed you to become who you are. Very existential, extreme angst, with this point of view no wonder she had such a bleak outlook on life. Although she is absolutely correct it is the nature of being human. One can be open to considering other values and other points of view but it really isn’t easy to be completely impartial seeing that your values were formed over years by your life experience and perhaps genetics.
>I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values.”
I’ve never seen this quote before, but I think I know exactly what she is talking about. As you get older and confront the reality of your shrinking potential, the values you hold become more important than the person you are. This is because the “outcroppings of heredity” and the warping of your environment. Fight against you.
It’s much easier to choose and hold your values than to live up to them. In some ways it might actually be more important. Biologic reactions to sporadic events of trauma can hinder your ability to live up to your values, but much less so your ability to choose and hold them. I am not as patient, generous, courageous, or assertive as I would like to be, but I value these things and I strive for them. But wouldn’t it be much more robust, much more three dimensional, if I could access that limitless potential of my birth, and fully be the patient, generous, courageous, assertive person I want to be, instead of just striving for it?
My interpretation is she’s enlightened enough to realize that the meaning of life is self actualization and being able to fully define herself as a human through her values.
At the same time she is deeply dissatisfied with that outcome and wants to scream, is this it?!
I’ll give it a try:
When we’re born we all have a blank canvas to do with whatever we please. This should be exciting as you could create any kind of painting (life) you could possibly imagine. But eventually we understand that our society (ocean) is only accepting of a few standard colors (values, as mentioned in the quote).You *can* use whatever colors you want, but you may be outcast…
my $0.02
What book is this from?
She’s depressed by the idea that as we grow into who we are, we slowly and relentlessly eliminate the potential others we could have been. She’s saying that it’s an odd curse that by the time we form who we are we’ve become a shell of our past potential, defined by the things we’ve learned to value or reject.
Complex prose is often enigmatic and multi-shadowed. It doesn’t have one interpretation and reaches toward many areas. One look at the phrase might be a reference to respect of others points of view and values. Once you establish your own values you’re sorta stuck with those. Its a fine objective to obtain them. They help to create structure in our perception and the lens we interpret the world through. Other perceptions are not as easy to obtain through the cloud of our own value set.
She’s discovering what a sick Ted Hughes was
Because once you have a set of values, you have limited yourself to an existence within them..you are no longer a potential everything, you are defined by the limits of the values you set yourself.