It’s been a lovely summer. This morning I awoke to the sound of rain falling. I slipped out of bed, pulled on my sweats, made myself a latte and invited Charli the dog and Blizzard the cat to join me on the deck to enjoy the change in weather. It was cool, crisp, and musical. There’s nothing like rain after weeks of sun. Contrasts are good.
But, Summer is dying. It reminds me of one of my favorite poems The Oven Bird by Robert Frost:
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
What to make of a diminished thing, indeed. Do you find yourself wrestling with this idea daily? I sure do. It feels like every part of our world is trying to extract more from us and give less in return. Diminishing. Everything is a subscription now. The subscription, turns out, doesn’t get you what you thought. Being told to wait for a table at a restaurant that has multiple open tables. That bag of chips is the same size as it’s always been, but there’s less chips. They’re literally selling us more air. Was there ever a better metaphor for futility? Speaking of air, those mileage plans sure don’t go as far as they used to. We remember past times where things seemingly just worked, where life was challenging but didn’t feel like it was trying to extract every ounce of our attention and money and give us less in return. What to make of a diminished thing? The modern world is screaming at us constantly. BUY NOW! SCROLL. REPLY. PURCHASE. LIKE. REPOST. SHOP THE LOOK! SHARE! The unspoken expectation to post on social media about everything. It’s no wonder our souls are tired.
