Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Beautiful. Alright. Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

podcast, episode number

130 with Momen and

Ryan. Poems of

Alfred Lord Tennyson in

3, 2, 1.

Hello. My name is Haysan Sorels, and this is

the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

number 130.

In the long course of human history, there are people who

make an outsized impact in certain areas, including

the arts, the sciences, politics, and, yes, even

finance. Most of these people's names have been long

forgotten, but their words and their actions still have

an outsized impact on the world.

One of the larger challenges of our era of instant communication and everyone knowing

everything about everybody all at once is that the number of

people who seek to make, an outsized impact in

all areas they touch has increased, yet there are

still people who are, well, average.

Serving where you are at at the highest possible level of your

talents and skills without looking for claps or approval

is actually the gold standard of behavior in our

time. We make the default setting for

leaders the idea that every leader should be competent at every aspect

of leadership, but this is just as faulty an assumption for

leaders as it is for followers. Sometimes, some leaders need to just be

competent at one thing.

One thing. And if they are competent at that one thing,

they can have an outsized impact on the world long after they

are gone. On the show today, we

will extract lessons for leaders from the most unlikely

source possible. And while I am not a

poetry guy, quote, unquote, I personally think the poetry needs to rhyme.

And then Ogden Nash is probably the height of poetical

doggerel. And by the way, we're gonna be covering Ogden Nash next

year on the podcast, so stay tuned for that.

These poems that we are going to read today have lines and

have ideas and have thoughts that have entered the lexicon

of western thought. This goes beyond zeitgeist and have

generated an outsized impact. Today, we

will read and discuss the poems of Alfred, lord

Tennyson, with our returning guest cohost today,

Ryan j Stout and doctor Momin

Kazi. Leaders, serve where you

are planted at the highest possible level of your talents and

skills without seeking collapse or approval.

So today, we're going to pick up in our book reading with,

the Oxford paperbacks version of Tennyson's Poems and Play.

So this is a this is a collected edition. Right? It has a lot of

different poems and plays in it edited by, t Herbert

Warren and revised and enlarged by Frederick Page. There's a

lot of content in this book. We cannot possibly

cover it all. It would be impossible. Thus, we

are not going to. Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to

look at, we're going to read, we're going to examine,

certain select poems, some of which you will know and a

couple of which you you won't. And then we're going to frame those

in terms of, in terms of leadership, in terms

of how people lead and what leaders can learn from

poetry. Now one of the struggles that we have in our world, and I was

actually just listening to a podcast about this,

oh, over the course of the weekend, is that poetry is

fundamentally, an an

eastern medium. Right? The way in which

we think is different with poetry or has to be different with poetry.

Poetry is about a journey towards something, whereas a

narrative, and and we live in a Greek oriented

rationalist scientific rationalist, sort of environment even

with our religion and our fantasies, We still want things

to make sense. We want narratives to make sense. That's a

very Greek way of looking at the world.

And we need both ways of looking at the world. We need both of those

ways merging together. And so, when we look at the poems

of Tennyson, one of the things that will strike us immediately

as we read them is, well,

is what he is doing in taking folks

along, taking the western mind along a journey.

And I quote or read from Ulysses. This is the

first poem that we will look at today. It's a it's a

longish one, so so bear with me. I'm also gonna give you a little bit

of background on the poem, and then we'll let Momen and Ryan jump in with

their thoughts on the poem. And by the way, thanks to, to Ryan for

suggesting these, these poems as ones that we should look at

today out of Tennyson's broad over

or oeuvre. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Momen will

correct me. I'm not even worried about it. He'll correct me on

this.

Alright. And I pick up from Ulysses. A little

prophet said an idle king by this still hearth among these barren crags,

mashed with an age of wife, I meet and dole and equal laws into a

savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not me.

I cannot rest and travel. I will drink life to the less, to the

lees. All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with

those that love me and alone. On shore and when through

scuttling drifts, the rainy Hyades vex the dim

sea. I am become a name, or always roaming with

a hungry heart. Much have I seen and known cities of men

and manners, climates, councils, governments, myself not least, but honored

of them all, and drunk delight of battle with my peers, far

on the ringed plains of windy Troy. I'm a

part of all that I have met, yet all experience is

an arch where the throw gleams that untraveled world

whose margin fades. Forever and forever when I move, how

dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust, unburnish, not to shine

in use, as though to breathe where life, life piled on life,

where all too little and of one to me. Little remains, but every

hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more,

bringer of new things and vile. It were for

some 3 sons to store and hoard myself, and this

gray spirit yarn yearning and desire to follow knowledge like a sinking

star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the

isle, well loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labor by slow

prudence to make a mild to make mild a rugged people and

through soft degrees, subdue them to the useful and

the good. Most blameless is he, central in the sphere

of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness and

pay, meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone. He works his

work, I mine. There lies the pork. The vessel puffs for sale.

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners'

souls have toiled and wrought and fought with me that ever with a

frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine and opposed 3

hearts, 3 foreheads. You and I are old.

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all.

But something near the end, some work of the noble note may yet be done,

not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The

lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, a long day wanes as slow motion climbs,

the deep moans round with many voices. Come by, my

friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting

well in order, smite the sounding furor for my purpose holds.

To sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until

I die, it may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may be

well that we shall touch the happy isles and see the great Achilles whom we

knew, Though much is taken and much abides, and though we are not

now, that strength which in old days move

Ulysses was written in 1833 and revised for

publication in, 18/33 and revised for publication in

1842. And by the way, this is according

to the, the Tennyson,

library pieces that are that are online. I'm quoting this

directly from them. Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the

ancient hero of Homer's Odyssey and the medieval hero of Dante's

Inferno. Homer's Ulysses is described in scroll,

let's see, 11 of the Odyssey, letters from a prophecy that he will take a

final sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife, Penelope.

The details of the sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto

20, 6 of the inferno. Ulysses finds

himself restless in Ithaca. By the way, Ithaca, pause,

that is a city in New York that I once slipped in and

worked in, and driven by the longing that I have gained to experience the

world. Dante's Ulysses is a tragic figure who dies

while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson

combines these two accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to

Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities and shortly

before embarking on his final voyage.

Okay. So we opened up with that. I've talked quite

a bit. That's a long poem. Let's get Momin and

Ryan in here. We're gonna kinda flow a little bit with this today.

Thoughts on Tennyson? Thoughts on the the opening

poem, Ulysses, and a little bit thoughts on the literary life of

Alfred Lord Tennyson. Bowman, why don't you go ahead and get us kicked

off here? Love to. Thanks for inviting me to be part of

this podcast today. I really enjoy it and appreciate you, and

it's great to meet Ryan as well. I love the poem Ulysses. I

believe, my mentor when I was at University

of North Texas, he called this arguably the

greatest poem in the world, or the greatest poem ever

written. He he's a Victorianist, so he is, you know, he

is biased. But, I I think that it

is one of the greatest poems ever written. It really

does capture the spirit of the Victorian age especially.

He, Tennyson does some interesting

things with the original story and alters it for

his purposes. One of those being, that in

the original Homer poem,

all of his mariners have passed away or died,

on the way to Ithaca there in Greece. And

so for him to say, you know, hey, you know,

my fellow mariners, let's go back out after just 3 days of being

home, that's an alteration. But,

but still the fact is is he has captured

the spirit of 19th century,

you know, empire right there by saying,

I'm not done. I wanna get up and get back out, and,

I've got to strive to seek, to find, and not yield. You

know, I'm I'm still alive, basically. So I

have 3 or 4 kind of big points, and one of them

being that the poem was written during a time of

intense grieving. He lost his friend. We'll talk about it in in memoriam,

Arthur Henry Hallam. A shining light he thought had so

much potential. It was one of his best friends,

and he lost him. And, it was it was a

shock to everyone's system. And for for,

Tennyson, he really, found himself in a period

of grief and mourning. He writes

Ulysses finally in the in the kind

of getting himself out of the the

grief funk that he's in. But he's not

really publishing for a long time, but he's writing

these poems in memoriam, and Ulysses is one of

those poems. So I I would suggest grieving isn't the

end. If you look at this poem, you can see that

grieving and expressing that grief in in a very artistic

way is really the beginning. 2, it reveals

the longing for connection. He mentions Achilles. He mentions, of course,

Ulysses is speaking. But he's saying,

I might, you know, meet back up with Achilles. And so you

could see a man longing to reunite with his best

friend. 3, it illustrates the aspirations of,

Tennyson's national spirit to follow knowledge like a

sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human

thought. This is a big deal. This is the the spirit

of the age. You know? And then I would suggest that,

he recognizes that there are different roles that serve vital

purposes. Telemachus has his emerging role

as the new leader. He's, you know, in his early twenties now.

He's been without a father figure for 20 years.

He's been having to kind of fend off suitors, who have come

after Penelope and and trying to usurp you,

Odysseus or Ulysses. And so

he doesn't belittle Telemachus' role as the leader

when he's gonna be gone. He says he has his role. I have

mine. And so finally, I just wanna just

reaffirm that notion that Ulysses is also saying, I'm not

dead yet. You know, like, from, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You

know? You know, I fear you're unhappy. You know? I'm not dead yet.

Don't put me on the cart. I don't wanna go on the cart. Ulysses here

is saying that. I'm not dead yet. I have more to do. I'm

gonna again, those those awesome verbs, you know, to strive, to

seek, to find, and not to yield.

Excellent. Thanks, thanks, Roman. There's a I I took a bunch of different

notes there. Yeah. I wanna ask some follow-up questions around that. But

first, Ryan, what did you think of of this

poem? What what struck you about this? Well, I wanna thank you, and, Hassan, as

always, it's a it's a joy, to be here. And,

you know, echoing a lot of sentiments, but also the the thing

that I think struck me, there's a there's a there's an

acceptance here, and

the theme of fate

emerges or he even mentions, Ulysses mentions,

and just the acceptance

of that. Almost if I know there's the the first

paragraph of Cat's Cradle, the Vonnegut book.

It's, you know, even if I was born, I forget the name, but even if

I was born a Thomas, I would have been a Brian. You know? So it's

like you can't run from who you are. Mhmm.

And I think there's an acknowledgment of that.

As he sort of pines about, you know, getting, you

know, getting into trouble. It's it's, you know, it's also to to to mention

another contemporary movie. It's, you know, Oliver Stone talks about,

you know, that in Natural Born Killers. He's he's doing the interview, and they're in

the prison, and Robert Downey junior asked him the question. He says, man, I'm just

a natural war killer. So there's there's, like, an acknowledgment and acceptance of

this thing that's it's it's a it's an outlier of a

personality. That's one. And the

the idea of not being able to rest,

I don't know The

thirst for knowledge I don't know. Is there an acknowledgment of that's

the thing that is also, like, leading him to his death or that's what he

I don't think it's leading to his death. It's what it's how he wants to

go. It it

seems like he's lived a a a a pretty exciting life. And

so even after all is said and done, this is how I would like

to spend my time, my last day sort of thing, even acknowledging,

passing on to, to Leni Cussen and so forth. And I think,

what else do I have here?

Tennyson does this so beautifully, but also as

Ulysses in the poem

despite all of his

his motivations and his he still has

time to acknowledge the

beauty of the natural world and the

language that he uses to describe that.

Where is the

where is Well, he talks

about the sunset. Yes. Yeah. There was one particular

line, though. But, yeah, that's so there's there's there's

there's, there's still an agnologist of the not the beauty of the

natural world. And I think, you know, someone who's

sailing off into, you know, the great unknown,

what a wonderful thing is it's like living it's the it's kind of distilled in

into living in the moment. And wouldn't we all really like to do that?

Well, we've we've got a little bit of a thing here with,

with Ulysses. And, you know, I'm a person who I've

I'm not obsessed with the Odyssey, but I've read it a

lot. And Odysseus I am obsessed.

You're you're obsessed. Okay. What was that? Yeah. I teach it every time.

Yeah. He he he has to be obsessed.

And, you know, how Homer had tied, you know, the

Iliad and the Odyssey together, and then how they really need to be

read and studied together, I I'm fascinated by by all of that.

As a leadership idea, though, there's there's a

couple of different leadership ideas that I think are are in this poem, that I

would like to get your thoughts on. A moment you hit on 1, this idea

of passing along your legacy

to others, but also acknowledging that you're not done. And and we have this

in our society and culture right now where, quite frankly,

people in the baby boomer generation have struggled

to let go. We can see this most notably in

politics, but there's other areas, entertainment,

culture, corporate business, where, know, you just have a generation that has had an

outsized influence on American culture in the latter half or had an outsized

influence on American culture in the latter half of the 20th century who

just will not let go.

And I'm in my mid forties and being a person in my mid forties,

the the I won't say the ship is almost passed,

but I can see the ship, like, sliding away

as people just won't let go. You know? And And so there's and then

there's generations behind me who are much younger, who are screaming at the boomers

to let go. Yeah. And and so we have this tension to

struggle in our culture. So that's at one level, at a leadership level, which, by

the way, and you see this sort of reflected in the poem.

One of the challenges of not letting go is you don't create a succession plan.

You have no plan for letting go. You have no plan

for release. Right? And, and I liked how you talked

about how Tennyson's poem here reflects the spirit of the

Victorian age. The Victorian age had zero

interest in letting go of anything.

First, we just covered All Quiet on the western front on this podcast,

a couple episodes ago. And so, you know, the first

big trauma that had to happen to the Victorian age was World War 1.

But it didn't the stuffing didn't all get knocked out of them until around World

War 2 and the cult and the collapse of the British Empire. Right?

And I would assert that that was because the Victorian age did not want to

let go. It did not want to surrender

to the next zeitgeist, the next historical cycle,

that was, that was coming into, into being. And so and and part of the

reason why it didn't wanna surrender was that succession. It could not

see who was going to pick up the baton

and move the thing forward. I think it's very important for leaders to

have a succession plan. Thoughts on this

idea of succession plans and sort of how you do this as

a leader leveraging some of the ideas in this, in this

poem? Do you want me to jump in there? Yeah. Go

ahead. So in the Odyssey, of course, Homer's

epic poem, Telemachus

is it it's an interesting poem. It starts off by talking

about sing to me, oh, muse, of the man of complicate who's

complicated, the man of twists and turns, the complicated

man, you know, and it's Odysseus. And, and

you think, oh, this is gonna be a story about Odysseus. And then the

next chapter goes right into Telemachus.

Right. And the next chapter is about to let I mean, in other words,

we don't really get to Odysseus way way into the until way

into the poem, and then we find him on a shore crying to go

home, wanting to go home. He's on the island with Calypso. But

Telemachus is the one who the focus is on,

and the focus is on Telemachus as

a man, as a young man who has

he's finally kind of bridged that gap

from adolescent and young adulthood into now,

what's he gonna do? And he's just he's downhearted. He's, you know,

downtrodden. And and I think that a lot of the

poem is

concerned with who is Telemachus,

what is his true temperament, is he

a man, or is he

less than masculine and less than able to to take the

lead? And it's one of those things where we

see that he has a wonderful,

side to him that's very compassionate. He practices this

code that, Zeus has instituted called the code

of xenia, the the the code of hospitality.

He sees a person who has walked into this palace

after, you know, several years of suitors abusing

their hospitality. He sees a man there who has not been attended

to, and he walks to him and says, who are you?

Not not who are you, but welcome. Let us take care of you.

Become refreshed. Let's feed you. And,

and that man happens to be a a gentleman named Minties, but

it's actually Athena in disguise. And she

realizes in the form of Minties that Telemachus

is is discouraged, at you know, wondering

if his father is alive or not. And

from that point on, we see a really wonderful person

in Telemachus who's about taking

care not of just his mother but also in the in the

absence of his father taking care of the palace, taking care of the

kingdom. When Odysseus finally does return

to the land of his home

and he finally gets to

meet back up with Telemachus, he

tests him immediately about, are you

a a kind of a,

less than male? Are you less than masculine? Did you allow this to

happen at the pallet? What did you do? Who are you? Yeah. Are are you

worthy? Are you worthy? Are you, you know or, you know, to

use, Dana Carvey's, you know, kind of,

you know, imitation of, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know. Are

you a girlie man? You know? And and he's he's really trying

to get a bead, a be you know, like, who are

you, Telemachus? So I'm just saying, he's trying to figure it out.

He does realize, though, oh, Telemachus is somebody

who who I would be very proud of. And finally,

Telemachus gets back with the suitors with Odysseus'

father with him. They don't know that it's Odysseus, but one of

the suitors starts abusing Telemachus in front of everybody.

And Telemachus stands up and says, the boy you

once knew is gone. Now I'm a man.

You know? And that that's something that's really, makes

Odysseus proud. Now let's go back to Tennyson. He he writes,

you know, I've been back 3 days, you know, basically, after this

long 20 year journey, you know, 10 years fighting in,

Troy and 10 years trying to get home. Now I've been back 3

days, and I've gotta in the original, you know, in the

poem, he's got to take care of the suitors'

relatives who are gonna come after him for killing their pappy.

Right? And or whoever. You know? And he

now knows that he has to take care of wrap some some business

up. So he goes to the land of his father,

and Athena has to step in and say, it's

time to put an end to all this fighting,

and she hands down finally the last lines of of the Odyssey

are, you know, she hands down the packs of peace. Right?

But the whole point there is that

Odysseus has to take care of this business.

But in the meantime, he can leave Telemachus at home and

and know that everything's in good hands. And I like that

Tennyson says, basically, Telemachus is good at

this. He's good at managing people. He's good at dealing with

diplomatically dealing with and he's, with all sorts of,

you know, factions, but he's also good at hospitality.

And so he realizes that the the the kingdom is gonna be in good

hands while he's gone, doing what he does.

But there is the sense that he does expect one day

to come back home, but he he still has, there is

an element of an uncertainty in there, which, of course, we'll talk about in

these other poems that we we're gonna examine.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead,

Ryan. I was gonna say just tackling from the angle

of, Tennyson

and the role in literature, you know, moving from

the Victorian period, the renaissance before that. So you have

this burst of creativity, then you go into the Victorian period

where, the focus is on,

re, some some reason thinking. And then,

and I think for,

for Tennyson to he there's just about every

poetic device is used in the

poem. The, there's there's internal

rhymes, assonist, dissidents. He's he's using neater. He's

using all of these things in different ways,

throughout the and I think there's and and as

contemporary poetry moves forward because we get to

after the Victorian is the modern period. That's where, like, form and

things start to fall apart. And so I half wonder

if Tennyson is is, because

this is it is it is a it is masterful from, like, from the

first word to the last word. It is masterful. And I kinda called

Haysan and thanked him. I was like, dude, I forgot what role

this person played for me writing poetry 20 years ago

and coming across him, learning about him. And but to

go back and look at this and to see how it's you know,

even to go through with, like, a fine tooth scansion, it's,

it's, it's still there's more and more and more. The more I looked at

it, the more there was, and I can almost go, like, line for

line and let me get back to it here. Where is it?

So,

the use of, consonants here and

manners, climates, councils, governments.

So you have the repetition of m, the repetition of the c's, and have these

internal rhymes and these slant rhymes. And as the poem starts, it's

way, the form as far as like end

rhymes and how he's using punctuation is

way, is is, there's a there's a form

to it. And as the poem goes on, it kind of unravels.

Mhmm. And it it becomes almost, it it it almost

looks like a like a like a helix, like a double helix. If you

look at it in like a three-dimensional form, like my brain kind of does. Yeah.

Yeah. So, just the fact that he is

honoring the language and, clearly has a love of

the language and and and, and and

syntax. And so kind of like looking at it from that end

to add to the nostalgic end of things of, like, you know,

this is these are all of the tools from the beginning that got

us here, and this is kind of like, you know, the the masterpiece.

And so kind of looking at it from that end, it was really wonderful thing

to and to to learn that he worked on these for such a long time.

Mhmm. So this isn't that's a misconception of poetry, and I know a lot

of poets will do will will will will be kind of

sinister in how, how they speak out about their works. Will

say, oh, that took me to that's that just flew right out of me. You

know? And often that is a

lie. And this is evidence that it was

17 years, at least, Mariana, but I know this one was worked on for quite

some time as well. So that's kind of just my my approach and angle at

it. Like, just I love the language and and and I love the, you know,

all that aspect, like the nerdy stuff of poetry.

One one thing you mentioned though, I think you, after the

renaissance, which which we have, the enlightenment age, we

all we also have the romantic era. And so, you know, you have people

like, words worth talking about, poetry being

inspired by. It's, it's memory, you know,

it it that inspires the feelings that you had back when you

actually experienced the thing. So we before

in between the renaissance and the Victorian age, we had a

lot going on there. And, of course, the romantic era is a really important

one. And but you mentioned nature, which the romantics were

very into. And and you mentioned the

Victorian era being more centered on reason. I think what's going

on with this notion of reason is that it's in

tension with the

the old ways of thinking in terms of

religious faith and the certainty that comes

from dogma and from from various, you

know, Christian doctrines. And so we're I I know

that Tennyson deals with that in in memoriam. We're gonna

see the that kind of tension between faith

and certainty and doubt and the new

scientific, discoveries that are

happening geologically, archaeologically, and so forth. And so,

you know and then you you Haysan, you mentioned earlier, you know,

after the after the Victorian era, you've got the Edwardian,

but then it goes right into, you know, finally,

you know, when we do have the modernists, right, and then into the

postmodernist, you know, it's like we're no longer thinking in terms of

Victorian anymore. We're thinking more like, you know, what

whatever, you know, Elizabeth is. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Well and and that's one of the things that is interesting to me

about literature, and and as well as film, you

know, but let's let's keep it to literature here for just a

second.

One of the challenges of a postmodern mindset, a postmodern

deconstructionist mindset and I

don't really care what your politics are on this. This

is not a political statement. This is a

this is a factual statement about what happens in postmodernism and

deconstructionism when those two forces are combined together. So

postmodernism devolves everything to power.

Everything's about power and who has it and who doesn't. But deconstructionism

devolves everything down to you could pull everything apart and

argue every single side sophistry, basically. You can argue every single side of

every single argument, and then you argue it into nothing.

And one of the things I've asserted on this podcast over the course of the

last year, and I'm going to also be asserting it next year, is that and

you mentioned nature and religion. Right? You mentioned dogma. Right?

You mentioned romanticism. One of the things that

postmodernism and deconstructionism do is they destroy romantics.

They destroy romanticism. Camille Paglia would would would say this,

right, in her examination of culture. But so

would Michel Foucault, by the way. He would agree with that. He would agree. We're

we're destroying romanticism. Right? We're we're exposing

reality to the harsh light of reason. Well, to the

idealism. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. It's a critique of I the

idealism of where the real Well, I would even go a step further than that.

It's even more than just the critique of the idealism. It's the critique of the

emotion behind the idealism. Sure. Sure.

And you can be an idealist or be

a rationalist, but it's really

hard. It's really difficult because your

own idealism gets eaten up by the acidity

of rationalism, at which, of course, it devolves into just deconstructionism,

and now you're in a hole. That you're you're back in a doom loop, basically,

basically, as the kids say these days. One of the things that I think we

have to do as leaders is we have to and I and I'm gonna say

something.

At moment. I I know you're you're, you know, you're a professor in English department,

Tarleton State University. Ryan has a long background in in

creativity and in, in writing and in publishing and in poetry.

I'm going to say something that I think will probably, if not,

offend you both at the very minimum, poke you

both. Right. Okay. Here

we go. Here here's here's my statement. But maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe as soon

as I think about it, maybe I won't. I

think we have to find a way to build at this point in time in

western culture. No more deconstructing.

We're we're done. Because when you deconstruct

at the end of that road, what do you have? You have you have

Nisha's abyss, basically, that stares back through

you. You that's all you got. Right? You don't have anything there.

And human beings human beings need to

create, and they need the emotion that goes

along with creation. This is why our movies

suck now. Our movies suck now because they're wandering in a

circle. Oh, and of course, nobody knows how to write. You know? But

those are 2 those are 2 separate problems that combine. So our GPT is pretty

good at writing. Oh, well, well, don't get me started on the AI then. Don't

get me started on that because, see, here's what we'll do. We devolve to

our technology. Right? We devolve to our technology. We say our technology will

allow us to be creative. Thinking machines. Right. Except the problem with the technologist is

you run to the Ray Bradbury problem or the Isaac Asimov problem depending

upon which way you wanna go. Right? And, yes, you run

into the Aldous Huxley and brave new world and George Orwellian, you know,

surveillance state and giving you all the pleasures that you want and dah dah dah

dah. And the and the flip side of the postmodern idea of

power is just pleasure, right, and hedonism. But those

are 2 twin 2 twin tracks that don't lead anywhere but into an abyss.

And so how do you build on the other side of an abyss? How do

you build on the other side of that? I think that's the challenging question of

our time. And I think romanticism, the romanticism

of Tennyson is part of the answer to that question, but I don't know how

we would capture that. I have zero idea how we go back and

recapture that. So so this is so this is interesting. You you brought up, you

you brought up early on, like, a plan b? Yeah. Mhmm. So

the plan b for industrialism industrialization was

what? The Internet era?

Because that's it's it's because they're they're pushed out. Right? Those

things are are are forced out. Of

whatever the the movement is or the the zeitgeist as you said.

And, well, I I keep thinking about the form

is commensurate with, like, the industrial revolution. Things are taking

form, becoming more sort of homogenized. Sure. Okay. And

so that kinda, like, mirrors the poetry, but then the

after the industrial revolution, you get kind of the Internet age, and now

we're devolved into this formless cloud.

And so it kinda makes sense that,

you know, if if our if if art

and culture, how they influence each other, if there's

not a if if there's not a ballast, then nothing

is like, what is what is, like, what

is it tethered to? Well What is our what is our

predicament tethered to? And is that the is that the issue? I think in the

west, we've decided that our predicament is tethered to identity. I think we've

decided that. We've decided that identity is the thing. Whether you're

whether it's a racial identity, class identity, gender identity,

it doesn't matter. We've decided that that's the the ballast. I love

that word or the anchor. I would use that term, but ballast

is probably better. That's the ballast that we are. We are

we are we're going to we're

gonna we're gonna hook our ley lines to. Right?

Because that will be the thing that will never change, will be our identity. Except

here's the problem. The technologists are bringing us a transhuman

future where we'll even be able to manipulate that

all the way down to the biological level. Forget what you may think about

the politics or the biology of transgenderism.

That's the beginning of the fact is transgenderism is the beginning of the

transhuman movement. It's the beginning of the manipulation of identity at a

biological level. Whether it's right or

wrong is outside the pale of this current this current conversation we're

having. We're not talking about the right or wrongs of it. I'm merely talking about

the fact of its existence in the zeitgeist Because to your point, there's

no balance, so there has to be something. Because you have to be able to

to my point, I think my assertion is you have to be able to

build. We have to build. We can't

just keep deconstructing or going down the swing

poles of power and pleasure. The sand is the deconstruction.

And if you're building on sand, that's your that's your problem. And

by the way, that works for a guy like Foucault or for or for

Deridian thinking. It works for that sort

of idea because that's the logical end of Nietzsche and nihilism.

That's the logical end. That's where you wind up at. But the thing is,

as I said before, it's a cul de sac. Right? It turns back on you.

Right? The abyss stares back through you.

Bowman, you've been you've been thinking about what I've been saying. I can see your

brain working. Go ahead. Well, I'm just for one, I think

that, you know, like, you you mentioned that the transgender,

kind of, I don't know, maybe dilemma. Or I

would say I would say moment. Right? The moment that we're having. That's a good

you know? I think that it's not that it's about

deconstruction into into

such a fragmentation that we have basically no center

or no, no foundation. I think, if anything,

we're just more aware of science. We're just

more aware of the kind of particularizations

that that science

reveals. And so it's it's not that,

that there's all of a sudden these new kind of, categories

or it it it's just being able to put some

some language to scientific

facts. Right? So when when we go

all the way back to the Victorian age, you know, when Tennyson writes in his

poem, Ulysses, he says, it may be that the

gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the

happy aisles. He doesn't

know. Right? There's a there's a sense of there's

a sense of uncertainty, and I think that the Victorian age was

very much in engaged with the

implications of science and or

scientific thinking and thought. Like, let's bring

Charles Darwin into the conversation. He says Darwin would like to

enter the chat. Yeah. Dar yeah. He's he he's,

you know, a a person of faith who's also observing

scientific, phenomenon phenomena.

Right? And he's putting language to it, and it's

creating with the archaeological and the geological

discoveries, a sense of, oh, no.

Maybe what we have the answers we have,

offered in the past aren't going to satisfy

a lot of what we're now discovering. Right? So it's like

the the the Victorian era is

really dealing with this struggle between

faith and science. Right? And the Right.

Right. And it's a struggle that has not I would agree with you. Yes. That's

the victorian. And it has it has It hasn't gone away. That's right.

And, you know, but then we have people like Matthew Arnold saying,

you know, here it is. This these armies ignorant armies

clashing by night. Right? Mhmm. You know? And he goes, all

love, let us be true to one another. You know? Let

us cling on to one another, basically. We we

can't be certain of everything else, but we can be certain of our,

maybe, our connection with each other. I think with with

with Tennyson, he's doing, he's at least

tapping into a similar kind of, anxiety.

And that that's all throughout the In Memoriam poems.

That's all through, you know, Ulysses. Anything that that has to

do with this struggle between what we know for certain,

but also now things that are that are going to

to start to, you know,

question and interrogate that. And it and Right. It you know, to

where now it's not about the certainties

of the past. Now it's, oh, wait. Maybe how do we

reconcile these new discoveries or these new ideas?

It is an age of rationality in the sense that

that they're they're now they're dealing with with

new scientific facts. So how do we deal with that

in in in light of our faith? Right? Well well and and the

question that science can never answer, it can't because it's

not ill equipped, right, to answer this question,

is what does the discovery

mean? Well, it's it's I'm sorry

to interrupt, but, like, language is being left out of the equation,

and I think it's really important. So for instance, there's a Japanese

phrase, koi koi no koi no yoken.

Mhmm. And what that means is it's a

that that I see someone and I know without a

doubt that that is the person I will spend the rest of my life with.

There's not a word in English for that.

So what you what you guys were just talking about is, like, it

was the melding of these two things that otherwise don't have an ident

an identifier to pull them together. So something has to be created. Koi no

yokken has to be created because it is the melding of 2 things or otherwise

unidentifiable as, you

know, you know, separate, they are not as, you know, great as their, you

know, their total of the parts. As their total of the parts. Yeah. Kind of

creating, and that that's kind of what I I see. It's

kinda coming in from from it's it's

not like I don't know. How do you is it a a a

an an invented emotion? Well, I think

you got a I think you yeah. Yeah. I think that not an invented emotion.

It's definitely putting language like, you're saying it's putting

language. That's what Tennyson's so good at. He's putting language

on the the the spirit of an age and the anxiety

of an age, in a way that that no other poet

could do it. And with our and with the atomization of our

postmodern culture, we have many voices trying to put

language on an age and on a on a set of anxieties. And it's

the it's the, you know, the analogy is the the

the the blind Hindus touching the elephant. Right? We we know

this story. Right? One touched the trunk and thought it was a rope. One

touched the right. And they can't they're not talking to the interesting thing about

that tale or that allegory, such as it were, is that

none of the none of the blind Hindus talk to each other.

In that story. In that story. Right. Which is which is to me really

interesting, which is why it's used very often or

references a way where or as a,

not a seductity. I don't know why I just thought of that word. It's used

as a it's used as

a vessel. Right? Well, it's yeah. For for understanding

atomization. Right? And for blindness to,

to the to the bringing together of

things or the or the uniting of things. And my only assertion,

this is my only assertion, is that we

need something in order to build forward

because otherwise, you know, then

2064 is just gonna have better technology with the same arguments.

Or gonna be having the same arguments just with ro personal robots walking around.

If Elon Musk has his way, which okay. Like, you know, like, we'll all

have personal robot. Like, we'll have carbs. Right? Or iPhones.

And to what end? Why? We we why?

And that's the question again that science can't answer. Why do

I need this? What is the meaning of

this thing? Science just says we can do it,

to paraphrase from Jeff Goldblum in the great original Jurassic park.

You were so worried about whether or not you

could. You didn't sink top to think about whether or not you

should. Sure. And now you've packaged it and he slaps the table. I

love that. And now you packaged it and you put it on lunch boxes and

it's on t shirts. And we laugh at this because it's the combination of consumerism

Mhmm. And the sort of postmodern cynicism. We won't be romantic about this

and scientific rationalism. And then the dinosaur eats all the people,

which is which is kinda where we're at right now.

And we have to my concern, my concern always for leaders,

is how do they take Tennyson's work, which may be

romantic and inspiring and stirring? And I agree Ulysses is an

inspiring and stirring poem. I love reading that out loud. How do we take

that at a practical level to our people and say, let's build

on this inspiring, stirring thing? Let's build

on that. Let's move that forward in spite of

everything we're seeing in our crises that I I

think fundamentally go back to meaning. We could talk about that. But our

crises that are all around us. Because unlike in the Victorian era, the

Victorian era was right buttressed up next to faith. As much as they wanted to

get away from it, churches were still being filled filled.

Public, public and private acknowledgment

of religion was still going on in the Victorian era. Sure.

Darwin only really captured the elites, really, if we're gonna be honest about

Darwin. Darwin's ideas captured the elites from Barry Wollstonecraft

all the way to Percy Shelley, and

that's not very far of a gap. But, like, you know, it

captured the ideas of the I know. It captured the mindset of the

elites. But the average person, the common

person that was walking around in the west,

They were still they were still going to church. Well, they were going to church,

but they were they were it's the same kind of argument that people are

having today when they go to the creation museum down in Glen

Rose. It's like, you know, it's like, well, did would did

people really, you know, exist when dinosaurs did? You

know, it's sort of like you can talk to people who are just as kind

of adamant about the creation story, not

involving evolution, and then others who who've really

pushed back against evolution. There's a lot of people,

who, you know, would just

not hear it, you know, especially in this part of the world. And

you know? But I'm gonna come back to Tennyson. He says,

old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death

closes all. Right? So there is the sense that

we do know some answers even in spite of the

the swirl of the age, which is, you know,

like you said, Darwin, you know, with the beagle and all. You know,

he he even if even if there's a

disconnect in terms of their timelines,

maybe in their discussions with each other, there is still in that zeitgeist

a sense of what do we do with with a a

past. I mean, the renaissance, they were still wondering, like, does

purgatory exist, or do we need to, you know, rely on our

reason? And do we have to have facts and data

to support our interpretations versus just going

with superstition or with with, you know How he comes

full circle. Right. Right. But but one thing is true.

It is certain death. Right? Whether you're a a a faith

based person or a evolution based person, you need death.

Right? Old age hath yet his honor and his toil, he says. Death

closes all, but and there's the big but, you know,

the big contrast. Something ere the end.

Some work of noble note may yet be done.

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

So, I mean, to me, I think that still can apply

now, whether or not you put gods in a

metaphorical, you know, light or

as a faith based or, you know, who believes that there may be

a a creator god or what what have you. The the

idea some work of noble note may yet

may yet be done. That's awesome. Because

especially you're you're young to to me. I'm 5th I'm 62.

Right? I look at it like, do I have 5 years? Do I have 10

years? Do I have 15? If I'm lucky, do I have, you know, we don't

even know if tomorrow's guaranteed. Right? But I would like to believe

that something before my end, some work of noble

note, may yet be done, you know, including being part of your

podcast. Well, I will say that's Go

ahead. Some work of may yet be done,

and and and the scene that he's painting is is it

mirrors the the language. So work may be done and the

lights, but, the the day wanes, and so it's

sort of like the ending. It's it's they're they're they're mirroring each other. The

language and the sentiment and the idea are mirroring each other

Mhmm. Which is a really wonderful thing. Well, we just we've

just only been through one poem. We're probably, like, we're

probably, like, probably, like, 45 minutes into the show. And we've only

been through 1 poem. And moment,

I I I've taken a, I'm not gonna say what town I live in because

this is good. This podcast goes everywhere, but moment knows the town that I live

in Yeah. Very well. And, I could tell you looking around, I

am going I am saying to myself internally, I got

30 years of good work probably left in me already at this

stage. I'm like, I got 30 years, and that's going to go by like

that. Yeah. You know? And I'll turn around and it'll be gone.

And and and before I moved to this current town that

I was in, I I that I'm in, I always thought

I, you know, wander around to, like, beige a 100 or something like that. But

now I'm realizing maybe that might not be the thing.

Yeah. It's it's sobering.

Right? It's it's, it's it's not it

doesn't create an existential crisis in me because to your point, I'm one of those

people of faith, so I don't have an existential crisis about that. I

have existential crises about other things, not about that.

Well, it is interesting. So the Camus is a is

a so, Camus, one of his, like, tenets would

be, you know, beyond anything, do not despair.

And reading Tennyson, it's like, okay. Well, we're

there's the existential, and I know that Camus often gets confused with

existentialists and absurdists, blah blah blah. But,

it's Ted is insane, despair. Despair away.

It's okay. It's okay. You know? It's

acknowledging that instead of yeah. You're right. It's it's

the like I said, grieving isn't the end. It's the beginning. He

is just in the middle of it. He's lost his best friend,

and he writes in memoriam. He writes Ulysses.

If you read it from that lens of someone who misses his

best friend, you can see that this poem really does

say despair is okay. Right? I mean, it

in the sense that, it's an honest

it's an honest response to to

loss. Right? And he doesn't know if he

will return if he will reunite with Arthur Henry Hallam. He

doesn't know, you know, if he, Odysseus, or Ulysses

will reunite with Achilles, the great Achilles whom we

knew. Right? Something just clicked over in my

head with what Womong Womong was

just saying there with Ryan with your focus on the language and and Camus.

And then I'll go into because we've already talked around Tennyson and through Tennyson.

So let's talk a little about Tennyson's background here. We'll we'll sort of switch this,

but this is the thing that clicked open my head, and maybe this will be

valuable for people who are listening. I think in

America, we don't do a good job with the number 1, we don't do a

good job with grief. But number 2, we don't do a good job with endings.

We just don't. We don't do it at a good job at a private

level. We don't we and we really don't do

a good job of it at a public level. So 2 of

the worst disasters probably of the last 20

years have been 911 and COVID for

the United States of America. Not talking globally. I have listeners all over the

world. Your mileage will vary. But in

my country, in America,

9 11 and COVID. And

I think that the the

cultural

breakdowns and challenges that have occurred over the last 25 years around those

2 twin, such as it were, twin

towers of disasters, and I'm not being funny here,

the lack of grief, the lack of public grieving,

the lack of being able to engage in despair publicly

and and sort of exist sort of

sort of sort of, you know, push all of that out, right, and

get rid of it. You don't have any tools

in the in a postmodern context where your 2

poles are either power or pleasure because grieving or the

opportunity to grieve can be seen as a as a statement of, I'm gonna use

another p word here that's often used, privilege. Only privileged people

can grieve. I gotta get up and go to work.

Right. And when we don't get how much just

that sentiment is postmodernist insanity

because exactly every single culture forever,

grieving is, is it was a integral part

of their society and how they interface with

each other and had their strength as a culture. And we don't Yeah. But I

would say that postmodernism is not the boogeyman here. There are peep

I mean, people as in India that I

know, because I'm, you know, half Indian, half Pakistani.

Right? The yeah. I I heard it. We

don't have time to grieve. We I mean, not grieve. We don't have we

don't have the energy to be depressed. The

energy. We're we're working on just, you know, making a

life and and having you know, just getting getting by. And some I

mean, not not all my relatives were like that, but definitely there

was a sense of even from my father, it would be like,

why what's with all this depression? You know? And

I've I think he was in denial. But I mean, like, I don't have time

for depression. You know? And, that's different from

national mourning. I understand. When you look at that let's go back to the

Victorian era. I mean, she is

the poster child for National Morning.

You know? She wore she you know, everyone knows her, not

as the vivacious, you you know, kind of German girl who

I mean, English girl with the you know, who spoke

German and was a German. He had to get that German

accent, you know, erased as much as possible. But still,

when when, her beloved husband passed

away, she was in black for the rest of her life, you know, with

these you close that went all the way up from her neck down to

her, you know, like, wrists and and ankles

can't be shown for you know? But, I mean, it's not just modesty. She

was in black. Right? And so she was,

you know, modeling a sense of this is what we do, you

know, as a nation when when, prince Albert

is, you know, dies. Right? I mean,

so Tennyson is in good company, you know, with with

the the notion that you can you can grieve, you can

mourn. People like CS Lewis come along later and and he has

to resurrect in a sense the, you know, like, hey. It's okay.

You know? So he writes a grief observed. Right? He writes

these these wonderful, you know, observations of

just what what it is to to go through loss.

And and even as a person of faith go, you know, it's

okay to grieve. It's okay to to be depressed

or, you know, we gotta work through it. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. So I I don't but I don't think it's a postmodern has a rate

you know, somehow made it to where you're making

the postmodernism. I what it was more it was

what was I what I was thinking was actions like we've made money God. We've

made God money our God, and so that Yeah. Kinda, like,

breaks everything down. And my only point and my only point

is if you don't offer with those 2 twin

those 2 twin events, if you don't offer the public an opportunity,

even a national day of mourning. Right? Like Yeah. Yeah. And and

by the way, this is this is, irregardless of

party, and I know irregardless is not a word. If George w Bush had declared

right. Had declared a national day of mourning or if Joe Biden had declared a

national day of mourning. Yeah. After

COVID? Yeah. Right. Like, just give us a

minute. You're right. The the thing is is the

American response is often, let's get

even. Let's Or let's just push through it. Yeah.

Let's just push through it. Let's go to war for 20 years now that you

know, with people who didn't even engage with 911, for

example. Right? We just we've we've finally just got out of

Afghanistan, you know, during the Biden administration.

So it's it's like, yeah, there is a sense of you know,

it's it's almost like like you said, it it's not

about even observing a day of just

grievance, you know, not grievance, but, grieving Mhmm. As

opposed to, the day of grievance. Griefence.

Right. Right. Which we don't we already had a summer in 2020.

It was a little bit of that. Anyway, moving on. Yes.

Let's talk a little bit about Tennessee because we've sort of talked around and through

and over and above this man. So, when we look at the literary

life of Alfred, lord Tennyson, he was a

baron. His name is actually Alfred Tennyson, born

August 6, 1809, and died

in, the 6th October of 18 92. He

was a poet laureate during much of queen Victoria's reign.

And in 18/29, Tennyson was awarded the chancellor's gold medal at

Cambridge for one of his first pieces, Timbuktu, which, by the way, is in the

collection of poems, that I have here of Tennyson. We will not

be reading Timbuktu today, but I would recommend going and taking a look at it

just for the strength of, Ulysses alone.

He published his first solo collection of poems, poems chiefly

lyrical in 18 30. So this guy had a long and

storied career in, in England. Although

described by some critics as overly sentimental, interestingly

enough, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the

attention of well known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor

Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry with its media

medievalism and powerful visual imagery was a major

influence on the Pre Raphaelite brotherhood.

This is a part that's interesting to me about Tennyson's writing.

And, Ryan, I know this probably jumps out to you with the language piece. A

number of phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplace in the English

language, including nature, red, tooth, and claw,

which, by the way, I thought was Kipling until I I started doing some research

into tennis, and I thought Kipling had come up with that. Just better to have

loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Most people think that Shakespeare.

Theirs is not your reason why there's much to do and die.

Again, most people think that many people think that Shakespeare, if they think of any

if they even think of that at all, I don't know that that's a common

common phraseology that's used anymore in our time.

My strength is as the strength of 10 because my heart is pure, to

strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Okay.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. I love that one.

That should be tattooed on the foreheads of anyone who,

accesses the Internet via their phone.

And the old order changeth, yielding place to new.

He is the 9th most frequently quoted writer, I did not know this, in the

Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. We've kind

of talked about the importance of Tennyson and his poet his his

poem Ulysses on Western literature.

Clearly, the man had an outsized impact, as I mentioned in the in in the

intro, with his poetry in general on the

west.

Very briefly, if you were going to sell

Tennyson to someone, and I think we probably done that already, but if you

were gonna sell Tennyson to somebody,

hardcore psychology of how to lead people, why should I care about

Tennyson? Why should I care about his writing? Why should I care about poetry?

About Tennyson because consuming to I

this is great because are either of you familiar with Ahman

Hillman as a classicist? No. I am

not. And he and, so he makes

some really, I don't know, arguments for, how important the

Greek language is and kind of, like, going and his,

I I missed his name. What what what did you say? A m m

o n At Hillman, h a hill h

Hillman. Okay. And,

and it it is interesting. He he, he he really,

advocates for reading, like, kind of nothing

before. It's it's all classics. It's all Plato, Aristotle,

and it's like the foundation of thought. And in order to

in order to kind of understand what's happening, you

know, 2000 years ago, and more with those

writings is almost imperative to have the foundation on something like

this, if that makes any sense.

Okay. So I should read it because it's good for me,

like my vegetables? Well, I I think because you were talking about,

like, yeah. Absolutely. Let me Okay. Go without

fiber for 6 weeks and see how you do. Tell me

tell me how life is. And why we're gonna ride this

stuff. Build to build so in order to

build on steady in order to build on solid ground.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I would suggest that

Tennyson is

a remarkably accessible poet.

Mhmm. Like, you've you just mentioned those quotes. Well, I

mean, I recognized all those poems. The charge of

the light brigade, you know, of course, has relevance

because, you know, Russia's already, taken over Crimea,

but now is going into Ukraine. But the the that

that battle, you know, the charge of the light

brigade was all about the Crimea at the time.

Right? So but the the lines that you mentioned, you know,

there's not, to make reply. There's not to reason

why. There's but to do and die into the valley of death, rode the

600. You know? The it's just very

inspiring, very accessible

language and when someone reads the poem

when they hear the words in memoriam, for example, they may

think, oh, well, that's Latin or that's, you know, that's

not for me, you know. But then when you read the poems and you see

they're very short little, like, almost fragments, they're

just almost little, not all of them

are long, but most of them are very short. You you go, oh, look at

what he's saying. He he he has

very, pedestrian

mundane images that he's using to talk about, you know, what

it is that he's feeling. And I would say the

same thing with with, the language that we read, like, whether

it be in in, you know, Mariana

or, Mariana. I don't know how how you know? But

you look back, a lot of like you said, a lot of people think, oh,

this is Shakespearean. It's like, no. No. No. He's saying

it's better to have loved and loved and lost than never do have loved at

all. That's very accessible. So, you know,

Ryan's, celebrated the language of of

Tennyson, but I, you know, I I just second that. You

know? It's it's, like, it's accessible and it's readable.

And I think also this, the the Brits were

reading it going, oh, he writes an incredible,

rewriting of the Arthurian legend.

Right. You know? And and it's so it's also

tapping into not just a a mythological

past, but it's bringing that past into the

present and saying, it's still relevant for us,

and it's still something that speaks to us

now. I would suggest that we could do the same thing that he did

then. Go back to the old stories, bring them into the new,

like, Odysseus is now Ulysses, but not just

Ulysses, the man who's going to, you know, end up having

Athena deliver packs of peace. But now he's this person who may just

go traveling again for a whole bunch of years, you know, leaving

his aged wife at home, after, you know, being away

from her all those years. I'm just saying he takes those things from the

past, like Ryan mentioned, 2,000, 3000 years

before. He brings it into the Victorian age.

Now I think that we, you know, just a

mere 200 years later can bring those things

from that era into our present age,

and they still are relevant, they still matter, and it

still strikes a note or strikes a chord. Who

doesn't feel sad when someone is lost?

Who doesn't feel, proud of their nation when it does

something right, you know, who doesn't feel, like

we wanna go back and resurrect the heroes from our

from our, in our memory, you know, and bring

them into the present. You know? I think that's what Tennyson

does for us. It's interesting. Hey, Sinead. You were talking

about the deconstruction deconstruction. It's like, and and,

moment to your to your point, it it's I think that's the first thing that

I was drawn to was like, oh, shoot. We have to read Tennyson. This is

gonna be a beast. And then I was like, wait a minute. This

is pretty easy. I was like, this guy is is is is making it

like you're saying, this is for everyone. It's not this it's not this thing that's

hoarded and I can't do it. I'm I'm brilliant. I'm smarter. It's

like no. No. No. No. No. I'm gonna share all of this with you. You

know, clearly, this is a a, you know, a touched person in this area,

and why not share? That could that kinda builds on the spiritual

end of things as well when you talk about, the the the the use of

nature in his writing as well. So that's a I really

I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank

you. And the thing is is this poem, this these

poems, these this poetry

is oh, you

just you just made you you made me think something, and then it just, it

just zipped away. But he's speaking to not just

the the the feelings that we experience, but he's also

saying something about poetry. He's saying something about the

poet. He's saying that there are things that that

people who are creative, who are tapping into

something else that is super this may be

supernatural. You might wanna say we transcend by getting into

this this this act of creation. You know?

He's he's engaging us in it in it and he's

inviting us into that space. And when we

go there, we're not disappointed, you know, but it's

just a lot of times people think, oh, it's not not

you, you know, but I'm a lot of times people come into it thinking

it's gonna be beyond me. It's gonna be too erudite. It's

gonna be too, you know, whatever. Now

that doesn't mean that an educated reader can't get a lot more of the

references or illusions. I mean, it's gonna happen when someone

knows the Arthurian legend. They're gonna come to, you know, more to

Arthur and go. Oh, yeah. I get it. You know, there's a lot more going

on here or when they read Anoni, right, they're gonna be

like, oh, okay. I know about, Paris

and, you know the the promise of Helen based

upon you know his the judgment that he met out to

you know between Hera Athena and Aphrodite right. I mean we

when you read those poems then and you know the back

stories from those classical stories. Yeah. It's a lot richer,

but that doesn't mean that you have to be all educated to come to those

poems and not get you could still get something tremendous

from it. It's so, yeah, it's accessible.

And if you just read the words on the page, even, you

know, like, even the last lines of Mariana, you know, she

wept, I am a weary, a weary, oh god that I were dead.

Who doesn't get that? Well, speaking of speaking

of Mariana or Mariana, we're

gonna read that one next. So let's pick up let's pick up

with Mariana by Alfred

Mort Tennyson With blackest

moss, the flower plots were thickly crusted, one and all.

The rusted nails fell from the knots that held the pair to

the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and

strange. Unifin, unlifted was the clinking latch

we did and warn the ancient batch upon the lonely meted

range. She only said my life is dreary. He

cometh not. She said, she said, I am a weary, a weary.

I would that I were dead.

Her tears fell with the dews that even tears

fell air. The dews were dry. She could not look on the

sweet heaven either at born or even tide.

After the flirting no. After the flitting of the bats, when thickest

dark detrans the sky, she drew her casement curtain

by and glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said

the night is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said I am

weary, a weary, I would that I were dead.

Upon the middle of the night, walking, waking, she heard the night

fowl crow. The cock sung out an hour ere light

from the dark fed, the oxen's low. Came to her

without hope of change, in sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,

till cold winds woke the gray eyed morn, about the lonely

moat at Grange. She only said the day is dreary, he cometh not,

she said. She said, I am a weary, a weary, I would

that I were dead. About a

stone cast from the wall a sluice with blackened water

slept, and o'er at many round and small the clustered,

marish mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook all

way, all silver green with gnarled bark. For leagues no

other tree did mark, the level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said

I am a weary a weary I would that I were dead.

And ever when the moon was low and the shrill winds were up and away,

in the white curtain to and fro, she saw the gusty shadow

sway. But when the moon was very low and wild

winds bound within their cell, the shadow of the poplar

fell upon her bed across her brow. She only said the night

is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said, I am a weary, a

weary. I would that I were dead.

All day within the dreary house, the doors upon their hinges

creaked. The blue flies sung in the pain. The mouse behind

the moldering Wayne's cot shrieked, Or from the

crevice peered about, old faces glimmered through the doors. Old

footsteps trod the upper floors. Old voices called or from

without. She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she

said. She said I am a weary, a weary, I would that I were

dead. The sparrows chirrup on the roof, the

snow, the slow clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing

wind aloof, the poplar bay did all confound.

Her sense, but she most but most she loathed the hour

when the thick moted sunbeam lay, athwart the chambers and the day

was sloping towards his western bower. Then she

said, I am very dreary. He will not come, she

said. She wept. I am weary, weary.

Oh, God, that I were dead.

I gotta say when I first read that for

this podcast, the image that came

into my head, and because I

I I I have I think it words first and then images because my brain

is weird. The the the words thing converted to

images. I converted those images from or

converted those words into images in my head of,

the the old school animated show on television, Tiny

Toons, which almost no one remembers, back in

the day. Steven Spielberg's attempt to do Looney Tunes. I used to watch it in

high school when I would come back from back from school. And

then Batman, the animated series would come on after that. That was your 1, 2

punch. And then my grandma would watch a Oprah, and then that was it. I

was off the TV for the rest of the day. But for that hour,

I would have Tiny Toons. And and and they did a really good job on

that show of hearkening back to and I've talked about Looney Tunes weirdly

enough on this podcast before. But hearkening back to what Looney Tunes did in

the 19 fifties sixties seventies in incorporating

classical elements into, the, the

cartoon, classical elements of literature, music, all of that. As a matter

of fact, if you go onto my Facebook page currently, you will see the Barber

of Seville with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

Everything I know about classical music, I learned from Looney Tunes. Anyway,

so on Tiny Toons, they had an episode where

they lampooned Edgar Allan Poe

and the raven. And weirdly enough, that

was the imagery that popped into my head when I read this Tennyson

poem. Those are the two things that clicks together in the mashup

of Hasan's fertile brain.

This poem is

also puts me in mind of Galatians 59 where it says,

a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. All you need is a

little drop of yeast. Right? If you know anything about making bread and then it

just expands and grows. And this poem

is a little drop, and then it expands, and it grows, and it

grows, and it grows. And that is evidenced in the

background of this poem. Again, from

SparkNotes, gonna grab grab this off the Internet. The subject of this

poem of, Mariana is drawn from a line in

Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, Mariana in the Moted Grange.

This line describes a young woman waiting for her lover, Angelo, who has abandoned

her upon the loss of her dowry. Just as the epigraph from

Shakespeare contains no verb, the poem too lacks all action or

narrative movement. Instead, the entire poem serves as an extended

visual depiction of melancholy

isolation. But it does have a lot of action. So,

anyway, I'm gonna argue with SparkNotes on that one. Yeah. Go ahead. Argue with

SparkNotes. SparkNotes. The same thing, and I was like, I don't know.

Well, we we we we will we will go into the AI

generated Google Gemini, and we will correct SparkNotes. I

just think they were referring that she's kind of just sitting wearily by a window

or some. Like, that's that's sort of the what,

and, and I love the chorus. There's a chorus. Mhmm.

Yes. Yeah. So Refrain. Yeah. There's a lot of

interesting elements in this poem.

And so while Ulysses is about

adventure leadership, it's more of a direct hit to what we actually cover on

this podcast, picking someone for succession, all of that. Mariana

is a little bit more about the zeitgeist of the time. It's a little bit

about some of the things we've already been talking about, existential dread.

Really though, existential dread, remorse, grief,

my lover will not come, you know, I wish that I were dead,

all these kinds of things. Right? And there's no there's

no sort of sugarcoating this to moments point earlier. I

wish that I were dead. I'm weary. I'm weary. I I I gotta get out.

Right? And the

zeitgeist of our time is driven by existential dread of the large things.

But I think that that dread is driven by

or is driven as a distraction for dealing with or acknowledging the small

things. And we see this on both the left and the right

sides in our political world. One of one of the things that

has has really been obsessing me the last 5 or 6 years

has been how our social media platforms

allow us to take very local existential dread

and scale that up to a national level. My and

I the example I always use is this. My son lives my oldest son lives

in New York state. He has he should have he should

never be getting news about anything going on in the town in which I live

in in North Central Texas, and yet he does.

That's insane. Now we can say on a good end that

that connects us all. Right. But there's a

downside to this. And the downside to this is

I I have no control

other than a sense of dread or

or dismay or remorse on

whatever may be going on in his town in upstate New York.

Just like he has no control, direct ability to

impact and influence events in the town that I live in in North Central

Texas. And yet, we can see those things,

and thus, our dread is triggered, which, by the way, I think is one of

the things that one of the reasons why those platforms exist. They exist to trigger

that dread. That's just a they they like that because it keeps you on the

platform more and keeps you clicking because you're constantly clicking around trying to resolve that

dread with more dopaminergic, you know, pushing. Right?

Yeah. They've monetized our anxiety. They've bingo. Excellent. Very

good. Yeah. Exactly. I love that. They've monetized our anxiety,

and there's no reason for it. And this poem is an

example of localized anxiety remaining local,

which is one of the things I think that it should be, local. Go ahead,

Ryan. Just just also reading it as well. It it's

like so writers, again, and if you're a good writer and

you're a remembered writer, they're by default of no fault of the there

are historians as well, so

it starts as time goes on, it starts to

it also becomes part of history.

Right. And

we which is why it's important to look at what was going on in, Tennyson's

life at the time and not just you know, he just he

just wasn't plucked down, you know, this time period. A few stole

his beautiful things and then went back to wherever he was.

So, I don't it it it

when you were talking about social media Mhmm. And it's

it just sent me it's just like the author of an Instagram person. Like, somebody

someone has an Instagram page. Through no fault of their own, they are naturally

a part of history. They're they're part of,

yeah, they're part of the historical conversation because of what they

represent in the movement. And so whether

and largely, that's determined on the relevance or popularity

or being sort of remembered. Right. It was just an observation.

Yeah. No. I know. I I I agree. And that is how

that's the upside of what of of these platforms that are sold to us is

that we will be it's the unstated upside. Right? You'll be a part of

history. We will we will we will rise above

the un the unwashed masses of the vast,

expanses of history who never had a voice. We now

all have a voice to rise above those unwashed masses of

history and to be remembered in the future

except when Instagram shuts down.

Well, if everybody's memorable, is anybody memorable? Well and then it all

gets memory hold, and you wind up in the way back machine of the Internet

and no one looks for you, which is why when I pass

away, I'm I'm asking my family to scrub all evidence

of me ever being on the Internet. Just scrub it from

existence. Even this podcast will go away. So there is an ending, by the way,

to this podcast, Gary. I've started that, by the way.

I mean, I I kinda like it. I kinda like the idea

that I could just disappear from the Internet upon

death. And and I don't wanna be resurrected with AI. I

don't I don't want thousands of hours of my voice on

this podcast. I'm saying this publicly. I do not want thousands of hours of my

voice on this podcast being combined with images so

that some nephew or niece or 4th

generation great great grandkid, you know, a 150 years

from now or a 120 years from now, can somewhat see an I don't want

that. I don't want them to see an avatar of me. I want to go

away. When I'm done, I want to be forgotten. I want to descend back

into the mass of humanity and

be gone because that's okay.

There's it's a bookend. We're supposed to be gone.

Yeah. He says it right there in the poem. I have a Bowman, I have

a question for you. How and and this is all you

know?

How do you think someone like Tennyson would process

the oh my god. The the indestructibility of the Internet. I don't know. Like, I

don't how how do you think minds and then,

like I said, this is not a question, but

just because of kind of, like, how we interpret it and how we experience the

Internet today, if you were to go back and tell that to or a modern

day person, ex describe what the Internet is. How

do you think someone like Tanneson would

would process? I

guess I guess more succinctly would be like,

do you think Tennyson would share share the same opinion that

Hassan has of himself about being wiped?

About being wiped? Wiped from the Internet.

Or wiped? I didn't hear what you were talking the last Wiped from the

Internet. So so

Hasan hey. Hasan's claim is basically after he's dead, he wants

to be as if he never existed. And someone

is a poet like Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tennyson, who's nostalgia

in this rich language, and how does that

is there a cognitive dissonance in there?

I don't see Tennyson as having the same,

desire to be, erased after he's passed

away. I don't I don't think Tennyson is,

I mean, he's left behind so many writings and poems

and and, you know, and, of course, he

had a long life of poetry. He was a, a poet

laureate for many, many years. And, you know,

but I I don't see I I think he would have

embraced the Internet and just, you know, he would have just, like,

any great poet now, you know, would have, you know, the

best would have gotten on there and the all the other would have been just

in notebooks or whatever. And you know what I mean? I but I don't think

I think, Hassan, you're you're selling yourself short. You know, like,

you've got this wonderful out creative output and

you've got guests that you've invited to be part of it.

And, if there's some insight to be

gleaned or gained now, well, at least

as a as a historical artifact, it's gonna be useful in

the future because, you know, it it'll it'll

hopefully just like when Ovid says in

Metamorphoses, you know, help me, oh, muse, to

write, a a a continuous

poem that's not just relevant for back then, but

also for our time, which in his time was the age of Augustus.

Right. So I'm just saying, you know, now 2000 years

later, reading it and going, woah. These stories are so

relevant. So so much so that, say, 400 years ago,

Shakespeare is using those stories to help

him write his plays. Right? And then Shakespeare's

plays helped Tennyson get inspired to

write this poem. You know? So, how how is

your podcast gonna end up inspiring future

leaders to do a similar kind of,

you know, initiative and and and

teaching tool. And, you know, I I think it's all wonderful. I'm sad

that the library at, Alexandria, you

know, burned down Ptolemy's, you know, life. You know what I mean? It's

like so I I I like the idea, you know.

But going back to Marianna just for a second Yeah. It's not

that you you mentioned her localized grief. Right? And

I again, going back to, to Ulysses

and in memoriam, of course, she wrote he wrote this in, what was it,

18:30? Right? And, Ulysses is 18:33.

The in memoriam is between, you know,

about those 10 basically, 20 years of

writing, you know, but, but I think that,

he, again, is reasserting that it's okay to grieve,

in a sense. You know, he's he's capturing her

grief. Right? Oh, I am weary. I am weary. I

am a weary a weary. I'm I would that I were dead. Right?

But it it's okay, you know, and the

the poem shows us that grieving itself has a

rhythm of its own. You know, the mourning of

the perceived past, certainties, you

know, now are replaced with with different concerns,

with new concerns. Right? But one thing that is happening

is the world still goes on all around

her. Right? And that's why I think there is action in

this poem. It's not though located in what

Mariana is doing. It's located in all of the

birds chirping and the moss even doing its

thing and the rusting of the nail. Like, there's a lot of

stuff happening all around her and we get to

see it happen in this in the in the

cycle of an entire night and day. Right? So

at the very end, it's not just, it's

in the middle of you know, we see, the blackest

moss, the broken sheds,

the look look sad and strange. Right? We didn't

warn the ancient thatch upon the lowly moated grange.

Right? It it's like all this stuff is happening, then it happens at

the the dues and even right the dues were

before the the dues were dried. She couldn't even

look on the sweet heaven either at more or

even tide and then we have bats We

you know, even in the middle of the night, waking, she heard the

night fell crow. The cock sung out

an hour air light and keep keeps going down the

poem, to where it's not just

during the nighttime, but even it says, when the moon

was low and the shrill winds were up and away

and on and on. Right? And finally, near the last part of the the

poem, it says, the sparrows cheer up on the roof, the slow tick

clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing wind aloof the

poplar made did all confound her since. But

most she loathed the hour when the thick moded

sunbeam layeth worth the chamber. So it's not just that

she's sad in the nighttime in the middle of the night. She's also

sad and really, really sad. Oh god, that I were dead.

In the middle of the day, right, when the sun is revealing the dust

of the of her surroundings. I mean so it's just sort of

this the the again, the rhythm of of grief

doesn't have a predictability. And at the same

time, it shows us that sometimes

you just have to ride it out. And, hopefully,

you will you, you know, you won't just succumb to

the feelings or or the thought, I am a weary, oh

weary, oh god, that I were dead. You gotta you gotta kind of

almost embrace it and then move ahead.

Right? And and I'm such a

reactionary person. Mhmm. To sit in it.

Yeah. Is is it's beautiful. Really

is. Uh-huh.

When I think about

what I'm doing here, I wanna tie these 2 things together, these

2 threads together, what we're doing here.

Right?

There's so many books to read, so many insights to be had. Right.

And I as I already mentioned, I only have 30 good years of work probably

left in me. So I

gotta I gotta hustle. Right? I gotta I gotta get after it. Right? I

gotta be on it. Right? I gotta read 4 books a

month. I've gotta line up guests. I've gotta bring people in. Right? I gotta I

gotta I gotta. Right? Yeah. Yeah. If I'm and and and at the end

of that,

I think a lot of I think of the I

think of the, the pivotal scene at the end of Schindler's list

when Liam Neeson is Oscar Schindler takes off his ring.

Right? His, his Nazi ring. Right? Mhmm.

And he says, how many more Jews could this have bought?

I didn't do enough. Right. I didn't do enough.

The, what, this, this, see points to something else I can't, you know, it's been

a long time since I've been 16 years old. Exactly. Takes a pin. Right. Yeah.

Jacket. Yeah. Jacket. Yeah. How many more lives could this have bought?

Yeah. How much more could I have done? Right.

And when you look at sort of the

commercialized consumerist promises of social media and of the

Internet. What we're doing here

goes in the exact opposite direction of all of that

and and and thrusts defiantly

against all of that. And at a certain

point, you just gotta be like, I think, at least for me

anyway, I have to be like, or I have to take the posture of

to paraphrase from Ariana. I am a weary, a

weary. Not that I wish I

were dead. Death will come when it comes.

Don't need to wish it or, or or fear or live in fear of it.

Right? It'll come when it comes, however it comes, whenever it comes.

Am I doing enough with the skills and talents and abilities?

And my larger concern is

that we are so wedded to the short term games. I just did

a shorts episode on this. As leaders, we're so wedded to the

short term click based games that we know we can win right now

that we don't go on the other side of that

arc, right, to do the deep long term things

where we may wind up at the end of 10 years of

work or 15 years of work and go, it wasn't enough. I could've I

could've done more. It wasn't enough. And so people will often

ask me, how long do you why are you doing a podcast that you don't

sell ads on? And I

say the the typical answer that I give, and it is a true answer, it's

part of the true answer, is that I don't wanna have an advertiser tell me

what books I can read and what books I can't. I don't want an advertiser

to tell me what guests I can have on and what guests I can't.

If I'm going to do something outrageous, like, I'm gonna read Mein

Kampf Mhmm. I'm probably gonna wanna have an expert on

there who may be a little unsavory, who might have some things to say about

Mein Kampf. We're gonna I'm gonna I want the

freedom to go get that guy or woman. I do. I want that

freedom. Well, I would hope so. I mean, I'm a scholar of Mein

Kampf in my new order. It doesn't mean I'm a Nazi. Exactly.

Exactly. And I don't need to do a negotiation with

a, very well meaning

advertiser who has a brand to protect Mhmm. Around what you

might or might not say or around who you might might or might not be.

I don't need to have that. That's a level of complication and ridiculousness in

my life that I don't need. So just know. Well, it's Just know. There's also

another thing. You you you're talking about you're you're talking about willingly putting yourself

in a a position that would render you powerless.

Sure. Yes. Exactly. I think that's also

the powerlessness, it can be applied to this this this piece as

well. Mhmm. Because how much we we have we

have, you know, we we we just said how many times moment and and he

signed. He said, we can go at any moment. Any moment. And and we we

can we can we can have we we have control over our response or reaction,

that sort of thing. That's it. Very good. Outcome. Go ahead. And

so Yeah. And then the other but the other reason

is what and then, Ryan, I'll go back to you for just a second, but

I wanna close. The other reason I don't have advertisers is

because advertisers play a short game.

They play a game of of of short term content in

and and and by the way, that's fine if that's the game you wanna play.

I don't object to you. I wanna be very clear. Me critiquing you playing that

game does not mean I object to the game existing. Because if I objected

to it existing or not, it wouldn't matter. The game is gonna exist anyway. This

is how human beings are. It just saying I don't have to play

it. If you perceive it as a critique and you're defensive

about it, cool. I'm merely saying

I don't wanna play that, but the game exists. And so advertisers do

play that and I don't wanna be part of that game. Right? I would rather

go in the opposite end and do something different and more interesting

that just might not work

out. And that's where part of the

erasure idea comes from because maybe at the end of it, it

doesn't work out. Maybe I did all these thousands of

hours, and the meter didn't even move 5 inches.

It sounds like investment and outcome, Hasan. Well well

well and so this is how I think about it. Right? And Mariana is the

kind of poem that puts that front and center. Ryan, go

ahead. No. Interestingly

enough, the ability to stay in the moment, her the the

the ability to stay in the moment, while

also identifying everything that's in the moment.

Right. Is that Yeah. Well, at least the poet's

identifying it. You know? And, you know, eve however

she's, you know, in the pocket of this

despair, you know, I I loved what you said before about

just sort of sitting in it, you know, just kind

of almost nesting. You know?

It's like it's a tough it's a tough thing not to

wanna keep fixing yourself, right, or moving out

of that space, right, that you were mentioning, Ryan.

But going back to the poem, I love, you know, that Ryan started off the

whole analysis back when we were looking at Ulysses with

looking at the language. You know, We see a lot of repetition in this

poem. Of course, we do see the refrains, you know. But when he

says when Tennyson writes, old faces glimmer through the

doors. Old footsteps trod the upper

floors. Old voices called her from

without. She only said my life

is dreary. Right. Come with not. Right? The

the the fact is is though she does have these other people

who are still reaching out to her and, you

know, tapping in into, you know,

her space in a sense by saying, you know,

there's still this is this there's still stuff happening. Right?

Mhmm. And, but

somehow or another, there's there's gotta be something to be said

for embracing

the grief, but also maintaining your

grit. I don't know, you know, in measure for measure,

if if it if it's that Tennyson takes it to its lodge you know,

to what happens with that story. But I think that,

you know, when when,

Tennyson is writing, he's basically

saying you gotta you gotta

observe the rhythm of this grief. Right? You have

to embrace it in a sense. It's good if you're

surrounded by a support system. Mhmm. Right?

But also remember he writes in memoriam after

this. He writes for Ulysses. You know, he's still

writing, but he's in the midst of his grief. It's like when

Milton's John Milton says, you know, in a kind of an

ironic sonnet, you know, that he's, like,

lamenting that his light has been lost.

Oh, when I consider how my light is spent, you know, basically, he's

saying I've lost my eyesight, but he's like, I'm

worthless now. I don't have any I can't do the rest of my mission in

life. But the reality is he wrote another poem.

He's doing it. He's in the acting field. Very thing that he's lamenting that he

can't do anything. You know? And I think it's a similar kind

of dynamic we have here too. You know? It's like,

you know, we're we're not done yet.

Well and and and creatives, athletes,

high functioning high functioning entrepreneurs, small business owners,

anybody who Ryan made a point about, you

know, with with the podcast. Right? About where my power lies. Right?

And then powerlessness with an advertiser. Right? Well, the

and the 4 types of folks I've just mentioned, entrepreneurs, small business

owners, athletes, and, and

creatives, there is a sense of

and this is why Michael Jordan is still considered to be the one of the

greatest basketball players of all time, period, full stop.

Even when he hasn't played in the league in 25, 30 years

almost now. His name still the taste of his name still falls out of

people's mouths. Right? Why? Because he he did

everything that he could do at a very high level, and he only

left when he couldn't keep doing it at a high level. That's Milton.

Mhmm. He's writing the poem at a high level even though he thinks he's lost

it. Yeah. He thinks it's not there anymore. That's

how you know Milton and

Jordan and the entrepreneur who you know who's built a

business that you've never heard of and yet is everywhere. Right? Or the small

business owner on your block. Right? I've known many small business

owners, right, who the reason they can and this gets back to the idea of

succession that we were talking about earlier, around Ulysses. The

reason they can't give away the business is because they don't think that their son

or daughter can do it at the same high level that they did it.

They just don't believe it. Mhmm. There's also elements of,

like, regardless of what is occurring in your life, like, the

show must go on, man. And

I worked with it I I worked with a woman. It was unbelievable.

She was a dishwasher at a restaurant, a small restaurant. I was

a friend of hers, a meat market. The the the back was sandwich and bar

shop. She had a baby on, like, a Monday.

She was back washing dishes on, like,

Thursday. Oof. And we were like, what? And she's like,

hey. Show must go on. You

know? And that's it. That's it.

Alright. We've been talking about In Memoriam. It is a

long poem. There are, my

gosh, multiple parts to In Memoriam.

Yeah. And then when I first looked at it, I thought, oh my lord. The

Roman numerals never end on the numbering of this one.

It gets into the Roman numeral c, which I'm not even clear. I don't even

remember what the Roman numeral c is.

And I'm sure Hundred. I I guess something like it's gotta be. Right? I thought

that was l. Wait. No. L's 50. So c has to be a hundred.

Right. Okay. Alright. Cool. All I know is

there aren't as many Super Bowls as there are parts of the

poem in memoriam. Not yet, anyway.

There's a lot of poems and yeah. Yeah. And each one of the

poems in In Memoriam ties into the next one,

in sir with certain elements. But each one of the poems can stand

individually on its own. So we're just gonna pull one that has a very famous

line at the end, and then I want to, what, I wanna wrap up because

we've talked extensively today. Both of you have been very gracious

with me, and we're we're we're rounding the horn here.

So I'm gonna read in memoriam, as I tell

my sometimes tell my son when I'm reading him Jules Verne and Journey

to the Center of the Earth, my 7 year old boy, XXVII.

27. That's right.

I envy not in any moods, the captive void of noble

rage, the linnet born within the cage that never knew the

summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes his

license in the field of time unfettered by the sense of crime to

whom a conscience never wakes, nor what may count

itself as blessed to the heart that never plight his trough, but

stagnates in the weeds of sloth, nor want

nor any want to be gotten rest. I hold it true.

Whatever befall, I feel it when I sorrow most.

Tis better to have loved and lost than never

to have loved at all.

And, again, there's tons more, right, of these poems. Go out and

pick up the collection of Tennyson's poems and plays. It will

enrich your life, and you will not regret

it. I wanna make one comment right here. Reading this, it's the

it's so beautiful. Like, it really is going back and and and seeing this and

be like, I had this book, though. What am I doing?

But so Picasso went into the cave of

Lascaux, the Mhmm. Cave paintings, and he

said, we've invented nothing.

So when I read this or listen to you read

this Mhmm. It it makes me

it it it helps me remember that we're standing on the

shoulders of of

yeah. They're they're almost gods at this point. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Because,

not not only do we quote these people,

you know, rightfully, you know, but what they're saying

is is it feels timeless. It

feels prophetic. It feels like

more than just a lecture from a professor. It

feels like that because they are prophetic.

They are prescient. They are brilliant,

the these poems by Tennyson. And he

he says things that get to the real

heart of the matter. You know? And, again, he

is he is, like, he is mourning the loss of his

best friend who was really young when he died. And

he thought there was all this potential. There was all

this, he thought he was that Arthur Henry Hallam was better

than Tennyson himself. Wow. And the but and

so he thought this is an extinguished light.

What in the world is going on with this thing called life?

Right? And, but then he observes the

world around him and says, I envy not in any

moods the captive void of noble rage,

the linnet born within the cage that never knew the Summer Woods. Right? I mean,

he's in other words, he gets in to he gives us these images

that ultimately he will tell us,

you know, that it's better to have loved

and lost than never to have loved at all. So he goes, it was worth

it. Right? And Yeah. It sounds very romantic, like

it's about a man and a woman. You know, I think that's how a lot

of pop culture kind of takes it. But this is really, you know

Tennyson the poet is is

revealing himself as the speaker of this poem saying,

it's better to risk it than to to

to to to break

yourself off from the world. Right. Mariana. Right.

Right. And, Yeah. And it it it it's worth it. And,

I hold it true whatever befall, he

says. Right? So there is truth for

Tennyson. He holds some things true. Right? He can still

hold on. And that's one one of the thing that's things that's

so comforting in these the midst of these poems. He will talk

about the this this tension

between let's just call it evolution as

opposed to science. Well, like and faith

or, you know, religion. Right? He in memoriam is full of

that. There's a lot of poems that deal with with those 2, you

know, mad those 2, issues, and and he's trying

to, like, trying to reconcile those two things. But

here he says, ultimately, I hold it true whatever

befall. I feel it when I sorrow most to

it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Reconciliation of tension, access to

knowledge. Right? Mhmm. And yet a a

a a a a sure fit of wisdom,

relationships, and the meaning of them and the depth of them,

life, and what is this thing? It's almost the Beatles

could have almost written that line.

Institutions, bureaucracies, systemic structures that build cages

around people, and then demand that we exist inside of them when

everything in us is maybe screaming to burst out.

I I I I frame my last part of this as the eternal sunshine

of the inscrutable mind. I was being clever there.

Yeah. And I think

that our minds are inscrutable to us.

We actually don't know ourselves. And a poet like

Tennyson opens the door for us to know

ourselves by exposing what we don't know in a raw

kind of way, but doing it in a way that is,

gentle, that is, fundamentally, I

think, loving. Right? And loving from

a agape sense, not an eros. This is

not this is not eros. You may wanna put arrows to moment to your point.

You may wanna place arrows on top of this, but it is not that's not

what we're talking about here. We're talking about agape love. We're talking about

the love of between that exists just between people

in a who are pursuing a common goal called trying to

figure out life. Mhmm.

And this is this goes beyond productivity. This goes beyond our tools. This goes

beyond our systems and processes. This goes beyond our science and

our rationality. This even goes beyond our religious structures and our dogma.

This goes to something else, and poetry is the

vehicle for that something

else. And so It's a big Go for it. Yeah. So, you know,

usually, I wind up these or I try to wind up these podcast episodes with,

like, this is what you should maybe take from this. But occasionally, I'll run I'll

run across episodes or I'll do episodes where the answer will

be, I've concluded nothing. I have no conclusions for you. It's

an open ended episode. I'm thinking this is gonna be an open

ended episode because I have no conclusion here. There's no

there's no dating mall from the climax. Right?

I do I do believe in what t e Lawrence said, never outstay a climax.

So we're gonna we're gonna let we're gonna let Roman Ryan

close off here. Come back to your points, though. Socrates

was wise in that he said the unexamined life isn't worth

living. Yeah. Right? And Tennyson repeats

that in his own way by saying I envy not the beast that takes his

license in the field of time, unfettered by the sense of crime,

to whom a conscience never wakes.

Right? I mean, it's embedded. Right? It ultimately,

he's saying it's good to think and

to have a conscience and to be bothered

by the various aspects of life

and not just be sort of,

kind of not slothful, just, you know, not taking advantage of

the moments. Right? You you you, in Ulysses,

he says, I wanna drink life to the lees,

right, to the bottom of the cup where the sediment is.

Right? I think it's the same thing here. It's like, what does that look

like? What does that sense of

living life to the leaves, drinking it to the bottom of the cup

look like? It's not just a hedonistic. It's not just a, you

know, a sense of, to eat,

drink, and be merry for tomorrow, we die. I think there but there is a

sense of urgency Even if you're gonna live into your

eighties or nineties or or beyond, who knows what'll happen when we're

ultimately at that age, you know, I would hope.

It's it is the sense of if you're gonna

live, you've gotta live. And to

be in it, like Ryan said earlier, just

in it. And so I don't know. These poems

inspire me to take

the life that we've been given, however

that works, and just ex just ring

it out to where at the end of it, that

cloth is that is dry. You know? The the cup

is down to its bottom of the, you know, the the sediment in the

bottom of that cup. And, and it it will

have been better to have loved and lost than never to

have loved at all. I think you could change that out. It's it'd

be better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at

all. Ryan, final words?

That I think, Tennyson is do both both of you beautiful, by the way.

Thanks so much.

Not only I think

I I get a sense of Tennyson's

character through reading all of

these, and it's not I mean, I've I've I've

read it's this is this is and I've never spent this much time on

Tennyson, but it has affected me much differently than

before. And I the

takeaway is I get a sense that he, you know,

he, you know, it's a,

he did the dance. Like, he, you know, he put his money money

where his mouth is, that sort of thing. Like, he didn't just glaze over

the the summary and then and then, you know, and then turn all

this stuff out with some you know? The the there is that that

book years ago called million little pieces Mhmm. And,

found out, after the fact so short story. I'm in

recovery. I haven't had a drink. The other day was, 20 years, and,

a friend of mine by the name is Cynthia. I've known her my entire life.

She bought this book for me, A 1000000 Little Pieces. She was like, it was

so inspiring. Blah blah blah. I've read the first three pages, and I was like,

this is BS. This guy didn't do any of this. And then he was on

Oprah, like, a few weeks later Yeah. And it was K. And

someone who's experienced who did the deed, I knew that he was

lying. But everyone else who read it, they thought it was a

miracle. And so that is sort of my takeaways. Like, he

did all the shit. Yes. And so

yeah. And with

that, I would like to thank Ryan

Stout and Momen Kazi for coming on the Leadership

Lessons from the Great Books podcast one more time. This is the

first time we've had them both on together at the same time. And,

and with that, well, guess what? We're

out. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye. It was a pleasure.