David Whyte's "Working Together"

We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
a common cause
to produce
the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
around a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we, in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and look for the true
shape of our own self,
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us.

-- David Whyte
This poem was commissioned by Boeing to mark the introduction of the 777 jetliner.

Train quote

Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances.  You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are-- cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole.  But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on.  And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away.  The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into an ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.

It happens to all of us.  It's just a question of how many stops it takes.  Two for some.  Three for others. Sixty-eighth Street.  Fifty-ninth.  Fifty-first.  Grand Central.  What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows.

- from Rules of Civility, a novel by Amor Towles p.3-4