This month’s selection was probably one of the easier ones that I’ve ever picked. In fact, I was actually a little surprised that in the past seven years of the Poem of the Month that I hadn’t selected it before.
[Stewart’s Note: Actually, I discovered that I had, in fact, already publishing this poem as a Poem of the Month in 2010. So consider this one a bonus “Round Two!”]
Those of you who know me well know of my unintentional journeyman career as a Training Manager in the 1990’s with a whole string of startups and dot-coms that were acquired or simply settled quietly to the bottom of the corporate ocean. I learned quickly that it was simply the price you sometimes paid to work with really brilliant people trying to solve really complex problems before the funding ran out. It’s true that the first acquisition/layoff was emotionally challenging. The second not so much so. I tucked away my 17 days of employment with one company that failed as a potential plot-line for a future Steven Spielberg film. Or maybe a Stephen Segal martial arts flick. I honestly haven’t decided which one yet.
I also had some great years of career stability. After four years at a “solid” Washington Mutual, I moved on to a new opportunity in advance of the demise of that Northwest institution. But in a nod to Heraclitus’ “Nothing is constant but change,” a recent promotion to Sr. Manager of Sales Training at T-Mobile was followed this month by the news that T-Mobile is going to be acquired by AT&T. I thank all of you who asked if I was ok, or assured me that the deal would never get approved by regulators. The good news is that virtually nothing changes in my work life until the regulators decide on the deal, which is estimated to take 12 months or more. We are still T-Mobile. We still compete against AT&T. We still correct people that the company color is magenta – not “pink.”
All this news made me think back to one of my periods of unemployment, when I would spend hours searching for jobs, writing resumes and filling out applications until I just needed to step away from the computer and get out of the house. I’d regularly drive 45 minutes East to the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River, grab my fly rod and wade out into the cold mountain water. Some days I’d spend a couple of hours there. Some days I could spend twenty minutes, never get as much as a nibble and drive back to Seattle content, relaxed, recharged and refreshed. There seemed to be something in nature that just pulled life back into balance.
It’s that thought that brought to mind this month’s poem by William Wordsworth, which calls into contrast the material world of work and money and the natural world.
William Wordsworth
(1770–1850)
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
