♪I am a rock. I am an island♫ or not

I can never think of that song by Simon and Garfunkle without also thinking of John Donne. It always gets me to thinking, "Well, ma'am, which are you? Solitary and isolated or part of a whole?" I think that  all mankind is interconnected. What affects one of us has a ripple effect toward others. However, that does not mean we are not individuals. As Boris Pasternak says in Dr. Zhivago, "There are no nations; there are only individuals." I wish we as a culture could treat each other in such a way more: sensitive to the needs of the individual yet working together as a whole. Well, I may be a bit of a dreamer, it's true, but I can't help thinking of a world where we are rich in the servitude of others over ourselves and that we work together to accomplish goals instead of trying to function entirely on our own.(Note: Please don't take anything political out of what I say. I detest talking about politics. I have always said talking politics is the quickest way to turn a friend into an acquaintance and an acquaintance into an enemy.)

John Donne was a very eclectic poet. He wrote anything from satire to sonnets to religious poems. He wrote some very sensual poetry that I choose not to read being a bit of a prude. He was born into a Catholic family in England during a time when that faith was illegal. Later in his life, he became an Anglican clergy member. It is not clear when exactly he converted, but he began to question his faith after his brother was tortured into revealing where he (the brother) had harbored a Catholic priest. His brother later died in prison. "No Man Is an Island" is probably his best known poem. It is the source for the title of Hemingway's famous work For Whom the Bell Tolls and also Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island (which I have never read, yet the author is very interesting). It is as follows:

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, 
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.