Pondering The Benefits Of Paper Towels
A Poem
I used to be an ad man.
The ocean is out of sight,
out of mind,
which is essentially
an advertising issue.
There’s a moment
when you realize you
are having conversations
about the benefits of paper towels
and you wonder if
there is something else
you could be doing
with your time.
I used to be an accountant.
There is a cost
to our constant
lack of action,
which is essentially
an accounting concern.
There comes a time
when you notice you
are having conversations
about the incremental cost
of changing a process
and you wonder if
there is something else
you could be doing
with your time.
I’ve always been drawn
to the quiet magic of the ocean,
following massive turtles
weightless in the water,
as they lumbered
through the liquid sky.
Floating underneath,
I see the blue above and
know the sun and moon
are unimpressed
by my presence.
My breath erupts in
a crescendo of bubbles,
reminding me to slow it down.
I am aware of
the position of my body
as I move through the coral.
A gentle brush of fins
will bleach them white.
As an ad man you
believe that any
problem can be solved
in a ridiculously short
period of time
if you present the
benefits in the perfect light.
As an accountant you
believe that any problem
can be solved
if it is brought
into the light
and examined
from every angle.
I ponder these ideas
forgetting to breathe.
Later, I remember
to ignore external
complexities,
to be quiet externally
and complex inside.
Like the ocean.
I wrote this poem because I started thinking about how we focus on meaningless things in our daily lives, instead of working together to save ourselves from what is essentially the impending doom of the environmental disaster we’re experiencing.
So I hopped down a poetry rabbit hole:🐰🕳
Questions for you:
Do you have random worries that are meaningless when you look at the bigger picture?
What do you do to help you notice when that’s happening?
If you had a nothing box, what would you do with it?
What is the rabbit hole that you frequently fall into?
Please answer in the comments below.
A version of this post originally appeared on Medium