“Remember us – if at all – not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men.”
“This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”
T. S. Eliot” – From the Poem “The Hollow Men”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.”
Alexander Hamilton
My Big Brother Les and his wife often meet with Jan and me in Mankato for dinner to catch up on things. We planned to meet this week. Of course, that didn’t work out. We decided we should wait for a few weeks until things “settle down”. Things really AREN’T very “settled” right now are they? When I left for my run the other morning, I was struck by how quiet it was – after a minute or two it occurred to me that there wasn’t the customary freeway noise that I am accustomed to hearing. There just weren’t as many cars on the freeway. On Sunday, our church did not meet, opting instead for an “on-line” service (which incidentally we watched and it was good). We went to Panera Monday morning and noted that every-other table had a sign on it that prohibited anyone from sitting there – social distancing. Now the governor has ordered restaurants CLOSED. The school busses are notably NOT rumbling up and down the streets. The news channels are caught up in non-stop coverage of the tsunami of sickness that is overtaking us. Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin just agreed on a piece of legislation for crying out loud. What is the world coming to? So many unknowns – I must confess that I am a little frightened at what lies ahead.
Clearly this “tsunami” that we are contending with is uncharted waters for us. What do we do? The above quote from T. S. Eliot is probably his most quoted line. It conjures up visions of man’s impotence, his own self-destructiveness, his helplessness. I hear it a lot when people consider nuclear war. We may be so foolish with our exercise of power that we destroy our civilization and everyone in it. After the roar of the bomb, civilization will whimper its way to extinction.
I am a lot more familiar with that quote than I am with the poem from which it comes. That poem is entitled “The Hollow Men”. I have read it several times but its meaning was always obscure to me. (Engineers just can’t grasp the beauty of poetry. Where are the dang formulas?) The commentaries I have read suggest various interpretations of Eliot’s cryptic language. But there is some agreement at least that the poem reflects Eliot’s state of mind immediately after World War I. Interestingly the poem’s most quoted lines were written long before nuclear bombs were ever envisioned.
But as I think about the ominous last lines of the poem, I choose to take hope from it. Say what??!?!? As I read the entire poem over again MY interpretation is that Eliot is lamenting the INACTIONS of man in the face of challenges. If we don’t fight against the torrents of adversity, we are nothing more than “Hollow Men” (actually scarecrows in the poem). There is a lot of language in the poem about death and how we address it and how those who have already “crossed over” will view us. Those who have crossed over will “remember us – if at all – not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men” if we fail to struggle against adversity. But if all we do is to fight with the other customers at Costco and then cower and hide away in our bunkers with our eight hundred rolls of toilet paper and seventy-eight gallons of Purell, we truly we will end it all not with a bang, but with a whimper.
So how can we be courageous? How can we not be hollow? How can we rise above in acts of heroism and bravery? We aren’t being invaded by the Mongrel Hoard or the Commies. We are being invaded with something a lot more insidious but perhaps even more deadly. How do we fight it? Some ideas – I bet that you may have other, better ideas:
• Give Blood
• Wash your hands
• Stay at home if you are ill
• Help those who are temporarily unemployed or underemployed – financially if they need it and if you are able
• Tip any hourly employees who are still working
• Wash your hands
• Pick up groceries for your elderly neighbors
• Pick up prescriptions for those who are unable to do so
• Wash your hands
• Maintain your civility as you interact with others
• Patronize businesses in their efforts to conduct their operations in whatever limited ways they can figure out
• Maintain social distancing
• Wash your hands
Whatever you come up with, remember we are truly in this together. If we can’t get through without massive loss of life and a decimated economy NONE of us will win. I can’t really tell you why you should be optimistic. There isn’t a lot of optimism going around the news shows. But some of those are the same shows that six weeks ago told us there was no problem. My point is, they don’t always know what they are talking about.
We have a lot of entitled, selfish people who have never been tested and I fully expect some to hoard toilet paper, push ahead of us in the lines to by hand sanitizer or pasta. Some of our kids are juggling day care while trying to watch their kids from home. One of them was laid off and found out about it by reading Facebook. They will struggle along with many others. But I just came from the pharmacy. The pharmacist said you can’t believe how many people are picking up meds for their neighbors who can’t get out or picking up groceries for people who are shut in. People are donating towards research; people are donating to food shelves; people are donating blood. I can’t tell you why, but I totally believe that we are going to come through this, certainly not undented, but unbowed. And it is going to take a while, I don’t know how long, I pray not a long time, but we will be stronger because of the testing. God Bless You – GO WASH YOUR HANDS.
Not bad poetry interpretation for an engineer! Like you, I am frustrated by those who respond to hardship with selfishness and I am so happy to hear the stories of generosity and caring. Several things come to mind.
One is the Fred Rogers who said when he was small and saw scary things on TV, his mother would always say, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” I think of all of the health care workers, local, state and federal government employees, retail employees in essential/supply businesses, truck drivers keeping the supply chain working and the other helpers who are doing heroic work.
A second is the frequent comment about firefighters, that they are the ones who run toward the fire. While public safety personnel are a subset of the public employees, they are the ones who don’t have an option of staying away from a victim or perpetrator who is sick, but who have to do their jobs as fully as ever.
A third is the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the frightened townspeople are trying to withdraw all their money from The Bailey Building and Loan and George Bailey asks them to ask only for what they need for now, because not all of the money is at the Building and Loan, it is invested in the community in people’s homes and businesses. While there are still people who ask for their full balance, Mrs. Davis, played by Ellen Corby (later Grandma Walton), thinks for a moment and asks instead for $17.50 to tide her over. When we go to the grocery store and find that they have restocked the “demand” items, I hope that more and more of us choose to buy only what they need to tide us over, to have enough for the two weeks they recommend, and trust that more will be stocked by then, that we choose to take the “$17.50” to tide ourselves over and not take all we can.
And then, of course, wash our hands. Thanks, Craig.
Jon, you are so right. I love the HyVee commercial with all of the heroes that are on there. Yes of course the nurses, doctors, first responders. But also the truck drivers and the people who are keeping us fed and provided for. I doubt that they see themselves as heroic but I do. Craig