ever since my kindergarten teacher staged a leprechaun break-in i’ve been pouring over clusters of clovers trying to find one with four leaves. as i got older, wiser, and more embarrassed, the desperate scrounging for grade school fame morphed into passive glances of curiosity with a dash of longing. a few months ago, at my mom’s birthday, i saw a lonesome patch of clovers in a sea of other, less interesting plants. i don’t know what came over me, but instead of the glances i’d become comfortable with, i got down and i looked. i saw it instantly, like my eyes had been trained specifically to find it. there it sat, utterly incapable of comprehending of how special it was. the treasure i‘d been searching for. my white whale. i shot out of the squat that i was in and showed it to as many people as possible, but to my absolute shock, nobody gave a shit. nobody shared my excitement, nobody thought it was especially cool. this quest that i’d silently been on for the better part of my life was complete, yet there was no fanfare, and i’m okay with that. sometimes you’ve just gotta be happy with yourself.
if you’ve given yourself to something, and it means the world to you, the only person who can decide what your labor is worth is you.
