“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”
Wordsworth wrote that 200 years ago, before telegraph, telephone, radio, television, or fax machines, let alone PCs, internet and PDAs. He should see us now!
I awoke this morning dissatisfied, aware that once again I had allowed myself to shallow out, aiming my attention outward rather than inward, toward ephemeral things rather than enduring ones. Or, as Henry Thoreau puts it in “Life Without Principle”: