The Importance of a Good Book

I’ve got to ask: Which book(s) changed your life? The power of the word is remarkable. I can think of several titles that continue to stick with me for a variety of reasons. This post isn’t about the titles. It’s about the magic.

Where do you want to go? Open the book and find out. It’s NEVER where you first imagined. It’s the going in with expectations and the coming out with no cares in the world that make reading the fount of the soul.

Which way will I go next? I have no clue, and I can’t wait!

Patience

To hesitate before one speaks. To gauge the territory recently trodden and that ahead. The value of collecting. This is patience.

I think I am an excellent observer. I study people. I tend to have a good idea how a converstion will transpire with a given individual. I have a good sense of what subjects are comfortable and which effect bristle at the nape.

I study.

All the while, I scrutinize, organize, compartmentalize. I imagine I have a file drawer of information in the form of nuances, reactions, and unconscious gestures for each person I know that magically is accessible upon reuniting.

My collection has tremendous worth. By analyzing the situation and the person, I can extract as much as I want and give as little as I’d like – all without offense, if I’m eloquent. And patient.

Sounds like a beast in wait of its prey.

When the niceties are stripped away, isn’t every conversation a give and take? I see nothing wrong in using judgment to develop a conversation. Yet, somehow, the description I set before you is repulsive. Is a conversation ever completely valueless to one of its participants?

Do we not all weigh carefully (how careful depends on the collaborator) what we say to a given person? Why?

When we don’t, do we not regret? Why?

Must we live off each other and wrestle with this host/parasite paradox?

I will be patient and listen for the answer…because then I will have gained more knowledge for my file.

Hindrance

If you pay careful attention to details, you will note the extended gap in time between this and my last post. I hate to have to admit this: I forgot how to get into this site. Each day that went by, I conveniently convinced myself, via laziness or slack justifications, to carry on about my business in the 3-D world and no one at wordpress would notice. Soon, members of the 3-D world started to bug me about my wordpress world. The nagging I initially felt in those first couple of weeks of being away began to resurface. Ta da. I nearly instantaneously found my way back in.

QUESTION: What makes it worth it to go out of one’s way to do something?

In the 3-D world, I’d say to help another motivates me to go out of my way. I don’t see THIS as helping others. I see it as self serving. I get too much out of this. I tap the creative. I explore philosophical jungles in my mind. I voyeur others’ musings. Me. Me. Me.

I’ve been told to write is NOT selfish. To write is to share. But if I’m not sharing PERSONALLY, FULLY IDENTIFIABLY, am I truly sharing…me?

And (I know you’re not supposed to start a sentence with “and” but I’m going to anyway) if I’m not sharing but only satisfying my own needs, is that wrong? Why do I even ask that question? Is it wrong to have asked?

Getting off track now.

Hindrance is the title. What hindered me? Hinders me? Hinders you?