I’m not sure about you, but I was pretty happy to say goodbye to 2010 and hello to 2011. Everywhere you turned, 2010 just seemed to have more bad news for us. Like the awkward friend who doesn’t realize the party ended an hour ago, events like the BP Oil Spill and the terrible economy with its attending high unemployment just seemed to bring us down all year long.
As I thought about all of the angst and trepidation that 2010 brought us, I was reminded of one of those great life lessons – that things sometimes don’t look quite so bad in the rear-view mirror. The oil spill was capped, and nature will slowly return to its natural course. The economy, and the jobs that come with it, are slowly, inch by inch, edging back up from the depths. Perhaps in times like these, the best thing we can take from these events are the lessons they teach us about who we are, and what we are capable of becoming.
I kick off 2011, the Poem of the Month’s 7th Year (and hopefully a very lucky one for us all) with Walk Whitman’s “As we O Me! O Life!
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
O Me! O Life!
O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
