A Summer’s Odyssey

Three Cheers for my fellow itinerant trainers! Were you forwarded this email? [Sign-up to Rude Awakening here.]( [The Rude Awakening] August 15, 2022 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( A Summer’s Odyssey - Traveling around the world to train banking graduates is great fun. - It keeps me young while allowing me to burnish my skills. - And it connects me to a wider fraternity of trainers with mad skills. Recommended Link [Biden to Introduce Social Credit System like China?]( [Click here for more...]( If you say the wrong thing on Chinese social media, you are labeled “untrustworthy”. They can then take away your ability to travel, restrict internet access, or deny your family the best jobs. They even confiscate your pets. Thanks to Biden’s new Executive Order 14067, a former CIA and Pentagon advisor predicts America will soon become a total surveillance state like China. [Click Here To Learn More]( Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Happy Monday from a much cooler Asti! It’s been ages since I wrote you from here, and I’m excited to be back. But my NYC trip, while infested with rats and stinking of piss and pot, was a great time. Not only did I spend some time with talented youngsters, but I also got to see firsthand the excellence of my fellow financial and professional skills trainers. Financial trainers steal from each other all the time. If someone has a better way of explaining interest rate swaps than I do, then I just appropriate the way he does it. (By the way, thanks, Dave!) This theft means constant innovation and refinement of one’s teaching methods, which doesn’t happen in schools and universities. That’s part of the reason people like me get called into banks: college educations aren’t fit for purpose. But this isn’t a rant about the shortcomings of our education system. It’s a celebration of those who, like Ulysses, get back on the ship and sail out of the harbor every summer. The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Ulysses If you’ve read the Rude for a while, you know my favorite pieces of literature are The Iliad and The Odyssey. Brave and cunning, Odysseus fights in the Trojan War and then takes the long way home, as Supertramp might have said. Switching from the Greek name Odysseus to the Latin Ulysses, Tennyson wrote perhaps my favorite blank verse poem, Ulysses. It imagines what it would be like for Ulysses when he returned. Almost hilariously, he hates it. He hates being king and getting old. I never really grokked the poem as a young man. But now that I’m knocking on 50, it resonates with me in a way most poetry doesn’t. To Shine, Not to Rust It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. Not all men are made to administrate. Some just love doing what they do. I’m one of those men. That Ulysses would hate being a king makes complete sense to me. What a boring job! I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; I’ve been to nearly 60 countries at my last count, and I’ve got no plans for stopping. I told the students when I was their age that I had a couch on every continent I could rest on if need be. But truth be told, most of my friends have been so successful, I’ve now got a guest room on every continent! And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! Shining in use. What a wonderful thought! Every day, in every way, making those improvements that will better our skills. As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. Ulysses doesn’t think much of being idle and avoiding death. But he puts great store into the accumulation of knowledge, one of the reasons why he must go again. 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And here, you can almost feel how disappointed Ulysses is with that. “He works his work, I mine.” A Rallying Cry There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Here, Ulysses is getting the band back together. He convinces himself that something of noble note can be done before the end. But the next part, the end, is my favorite. You may remember Judi Dench’s M reciting part of it in [Skyfall](. In that scene, she was lamenting the diminution of British power in the world. But Ulysses meant it as a rallying cry for his men: Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. For older men like me, the metaphor is rich. But for young folks, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” is a simple set of instructions. And that makes it richer. Wrap Up Thank you for indulging me today. And thanks to my old friends and new, for such a great trip. This week, I’ll get back on my sarcastic high horse about the outrage of Salman Rushdie’s stabbing, the ridiculous claims our economy is healthy, and this market’s sucker’s rally. Until then, I hope you find some inspiration from an old man and his old poem. Have a great day! All the best, Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening [ARCHIVE]( | [ABOUT]( | [CONTACT US]( Rude Awakening is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your Rude Awakening e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Rude Awakening, feel free to [unsubscribe](. Please read our [Privacy Statement.]( If you are you having trouble receiving your Rude Awakening subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting us.]( © 2022 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. 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