To Whom It May Concern
Created | Updated Jan 16, 2003
January 16th, 2003
Dear Sir or Madam,
In the English speaking cultures there are certain social values and truths handed down through the glory of our poetry and literature. Happily, my youthful education included a cursory exposure to many of these classics, and I like to think that every person born to an English speaking country is given the chance to become familiar with those great truths that shape and define who we are.
Many of these truths and values are probably of a universal nature and no doubt many are also expressed in other languages, perhaps through their literature or their religion or their songs and oral traditions. I can't say they all are; some truths may be peculiar to our culture while others are simply unknown or unrecognised by less civilised, less complex societies, or at least societies that have not enjoyed the long and arduous history of the English speaking peoples. Not every culture has had a Shakespeare; perhaps they didn't need one.
One of the great, truly universal truths was taught us by John Donne in his Meditation on the inter-connectedness of our human species, expressed succinctly in the famous line 'no man is an island'. Here we learn that each of us is connected and responsible in some way to all of our fellows and thereby we are all part of a greater truth. The essay goes on to say 'never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee'.
Donne held the title and office of Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London but during this same period (1621 to his death in 1631) he was also Rector of the small village church in Blunham. Today you will find six bells in that church's tower, but the original one has been hanging there since 1530. It is likely the very same bell Donne refers to in Meditation XVII, written the year before his own death, perhaps in delirious semi-conscious celebration of that bell's 100th anniversary of tolling for the dead.
This notion that we are all connected and experience the same cycle of birth, life and death is a universal truth. And while we are all free to some extent to determine just how we spend our lives between birth and death, the most important reality is our connection to other living beings. As Donne has pointed out, when the church bell knells to mark the passing of a fellow soul, we should all remain keenly aware that it is as much for each of us that this bell is rung.
Today, in our crowded modern cities, there is an almost constant wail of police, fire and ambulance sirens somewhere off in the distance. We barely hear them anymore, even though each one represents some tragedy that has struck 'someone else'. Only when they wail very close by, or stop on our street, do we even pause to ask what happened or inquire if we are acquainted with any person involved. Then, we might be reminded of how 'lucky' we are and sigh, thankful that this time they have not yet come for us.
If you have to admit that you too have felt that relief or ever breathed a short prayer of thanks for being spared, then I think that without realising it, we all may have lost our awareness of the greater truth Donne preached. So let me remind you again, by updating
Donne's country village church-bell scenario into the context of our modern big-city standards,'Ask not for whom those sirens wail, they wail for thee.'
Hoping you will give some consideration to these thoughts,
I remain your most loyal and least dutiful savant,
peace,
~jwf~
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