Learning to Understand and Accept Change

Photo by Ramiro Martinez on Unsplash

There is something important that I’ve recently learned to understand and accept. Things change. And they don’t always change permanently. Analogies about the cycles of the moon have become cliché but maybe there’s something to it after all.

I never really noticed the changes in the moon until I moved to the rural desert. The living room of our desert home is mostly windows, which makes the moon-rise, and the sunrise for that matter, very visible. Through our mostly uncovered windows, it’s obvious that the sun and moon rise and set each day more and more to the north and south as the earth wobbles on its axis. It’s amazing to watch and makes one see very clearly why ancient people might worship this cycle. It’s very comforting.

While the sun takes its sweet time moving across the sky, the seasons change day by day, week by week, the moon gives us a whole different feeling. To me, the sun is the big picture, the whole life, but the moon is our daily struggle. She rushes across the night, coming up at different times of the day or night, in different shapes and sizes. Her cycles are quicker and more dramatic than the sun’s. One week she comes up at sunset full of herself. The next week she’s late and half-dressed. Sometimes she comes up a shell of her usual self, right in the middle of the day. Some days we can’t see her at all. And yet, no one stresses about it. No one thinks, “Oh shit! The moon! Something has upset her. We have to fix it!” We just wait, because we know she’ll be back if we leave her to her own devices.

And the moon? I don’t see her as caring much about what the sun is up to, or the earth, or us. She just does her thing and we love her for it.

What if we were more like that? What if we became more aware of our own cycles and simply accepted them? What if we understood other people will have different cycles that have nothing to do with us, and accepted them right where they are?

And why is it that we think that we must live in a straight line or a climbing staircase? These analogies cause us to believe that if we fall to the left or right of the line or reach the end of a set of stairs with no way to go up farther, we fail. We look at our relationships with the world around us as if they can only escalate or die, reach the next level or die off.

For me seems to be more of a cycle that comes around again and again, sometimes with the same person, sometimes with a different person, with any type of relationship. Whether we’re talking about a romantic relationship, a platonic friendship, a sexual relationship, or a parent, child, or sibling, etc., makes no difference. All relationships cycle through and around and back, spiraling up, down, or laterally. Even the relationship we have with ourselves.

My relationship with myself is complicated. There are days and weeks that I feel like she’s doing a fine job of all the things I expect of her. I’m proud of her accomplishments, her strength. She’s a good, responsible friend to have. And then, even though she has not changed one bit in reality, my feelings toward her change. She forgot something I wanted her to remember or took a day off from responsibility to play. I blame her for everything that has gone wrong with our life. In time, again though she’s not changed at all, I begin to fall in love with her. She’s sexy and confident and I want to be close to her, to spend time alone with her. Then it’s gone again, she’s just another woman in my way and I long to break free. Days later, there she is again impressing me with her strength and brilliance. And we’re coming around on the cycle again.

In every relationship we have, each time we go around this cycle we learn more about each other. With every successful ebb and flow of the tide of emotions, we learn to trust each other more. What constitutes “successful?” We don’t walk away from the relationship and we don’t throw hurtful words or actions at each other to make the other do or act the way we want them to only to make us feel better. Success is loving the other unconditionally, regardless of our feelings at the moment.

The more I come to understand that how I feel is not necessarily a reflection of anyone else’s behavior, but merely a season or phase of the moon, the stronger my relationships grow. Every time I learn again that the cycle will return, that every feeling is temporary, the stronger that cycle turns into a spiral ascending into the sky.

Pretty “out there” isn’t it? It’s the truth though. You won’t always be happy. You won’t always be sad. No one needs to be fixed. No one needs to be set straight. It all just is. Accept it. Be in it. And wait for the moon to cycle back again.

Wild For A Time

Photo by Michael Anfang on Unsplash

Do you trust me?

Will you let me go feral for a time?
Will you take the reins and tame me again when I return?
Will you be the stable I can return to, hot and sweaty from my run in the wild?
Will you hold me tight, wash the dirt and sweat away, and bed me down?

Can I trust you?

Letter to My Grumpy Self

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Dear Me,

I know you’re tired and grumpy. I know you are frustrated with yourself. I know you want so badly to do better, to complete more tasks, to be more organized, to eat better, to be stronger and healthier.

I know you want to run out into the world screaming obscenities. I know you want to connect with other humans on a deeper level, to spend quality time with real friends, and to run away and hide at the same time.

I know you’re thinking, last week was so good, why does this week suck so bad? Why can’t I stay on track? Why can’t I keep up the pace? Everyone else seems to be able to do so much and here I am grumbling. You feel lazy and “out of sorts.”

I know you don’t want to hear this but you are enough right where you are. Your house is clean enough. Your family and friends love you just the way you are. You honor your commitments. You love people unconditionally. You do your best.

Life is a big series of cycles, ups and downs that keep things interesting. Imagine how boring it would be if every day you got up and felt the same way? Even joy starts to get depressing if its all you ever experience!

The kids are distracting you. Embrace them. They’re teenagers. They’ll be gone soon, just like the exhausting babies, the disruptive and messy kids, and anxious and annoying preteens they used to be and that you miss so much when you see those old pictures.

The weather has changed, and you can’t go outside and do the thing you were doing last week. Notice and enjoy it. Remember last month when you sat there crying for cooler weather?

You’re feeling blue and less than productive. Look at the amazing week you had earlier this month and the not so productive one you had before that. It’ll come back. It always does.

Don’t ruin today worrying about tomorrow or lamenting yesterday. Find something positive to focus on. Or, even better, make the conscious decision to enjoy the moment instead. Grab a cup of tea, your book, and find a place to hide for a bit. Sing along with those crazy teens practicing guitar in the middle of the living room where you were trying to vacuum. Write out some words of encouragement to yourself and post it. Forget dinner and order a pizza. Harass your husband to go for a walk, even though it’s cold. And be thankful for what you have, who you have, and what you can do.

Take care of yourself, love. I love you, every messy, tired, pissy, and confused piece of you.

Love,

You

Learning to Share Through Abundance

“Of course, they aren’t!” I can just hear people scoff when I post that statement. But then I hear the way they talk about the people in their lives and wonder…do they know what that really means?

We treat people as possessions when we get angry that a child is not “living up to his potential” and doing something other than what we had planned for them. We treat people as possessions when we insist that our romantic partners spend all their free time with us and never even look in the direction of another. We treat people as possessions when we get angry that our parents move to another state away from our young family.

Each of us has a life to live independent from the others around us. There are times in our life when we come together and work toward a common goal, a family, a job, a project, but ultimately, we are responsible for our own lives, for achieving our own goals, making ourselves happy.

When we choose to work in relationship with others for a short or long term, both sides of the relationship are voluntary. The relationship lasts as long as everyone in it wants to be in it. And when one person in the relationship no longer wants to be there, they are not monsters, they are not mean, they are not evil. They are acting in their own best interest and they should be encouraged to do so, even if that means we must be sad or hurt a bit while we adjust.

These things seem to be so glaringly obvious to me lately, but still I see the way people treat the ones they love and wonder what it would be like if we all respected each other more.

The possessiveness I see reminds me of a small child.

“My friend!”

“My lover!”

“My wife!”

“My parent!”

“My child!”

They gather all their precious toys around them, clutching in desperation to keep their possessions from being stolen away by others. When someone makes a move to see what it is that they are holding so dear, they snatch it close and holler, “Mine!”

Children haven’t learned to share yet and to learn to share, they must at first feel secure that things won’t be taken away by force. We allow them to horde their things and build up the strength to share with the presence of abundance.

Do we not think this will work with relationships as well? When I have filled up my bucket of love so to speak, I learn to share that love with others. When I spend time and energy in any relationship, I know when that person spends time away from me, they will return. I am sharing my precious with others, not giving it away.

My children will grow into independent and fully functional adults, that go into the world without me and bring back to me the new relationships they have built with others to share with me.

My husband spends some of his after-work time meeting new people, following new activities, without my presence. And when he returns, he is happier and brings new feelings and energy, new people, and new activities to our relationship.

My parents, while not right down the street while I raise my own children, have moved to another state and now I can bring my family on vacation there and enjoy their company on completely different terms than the way I grew up.

Possessiveness is only jealousy in disguise. There is no faster destroyer of love than feeling as if one is a possession of another. “If you love something, set it free…”

Honestly Offended by Your Honesty

I didn’t start to write anything on Friday, so now I’m behind for my Monday post.

Note to self: Write five days, not four, and then take Saturday and Sunday off.

I did start to write this morning though and you’ll get to read it tomorrow when I finish it. Right now, I need a break from that post. But I’m still left with nothing to post for you today, so I scrounged through some old drafts and found this to add on to. Strange thing is that it comes up today, after I received a text from a friend with different views that I was immediately offended by. I’ve been sitting here thinking about how to respond in a way that won’t escalate an argument, but open a dialog. Why does every exchange have to be so complicated? Probably because I want it to be.

I wrote this short outburst after an intense exchange with another friend, accused of “playing games” and “being judgmental” when I felt I was only asking questions and being honest about my feelings that change often.

How come we all can’t be more honest and open about our feelings, our thoughts, ourselves? Why can’t we ask more questions of each other and answer honestly? Why can’t we all assume positive intent when we’re dealing with each other? I think we’d get a hell of a lot farther in relationships with other humans if we stopped taking everything everyone else says, does, or feels as a personal attack. What if we all just didn’t assume anything about others? If you want to know, ask. And when you get the answer don’t get all butthurt about the answer!

We’re all feeding off each other. I don’t tell people what I really want to say for fear they will be angry or sad about it. So they assume my silence is something other than it is. Misunderstanding breeds a deeper pain. Once it comes out, they assume I was being cruel, playing games, etc. When really I am just a human that hates to wound another. Fear. It’s a circle of shit.
What do you think? Why are we so distrustful of each other?

“Tell Me Lies” Book Review

I got this book, not because I heard of it or the author before, but because the cover caught my eye at Barnes & Noble and when I read the back, “The wrong one. The one you couldn’t let go of. The one you’ll never forget.” I had to have it. Let’s just say we’ve all been there, right?

Funny side note: The first time I read ALL the words on the cover of this book was just now, as I was adding the picture I took to my post. It caught my breath. Why did I not notice before?

A few weeks later, when I finally got around to reading it (my to-read pile was already pretty deep), I was initially disappointed. Shallow college kids and their party antics? Not really my thing, even when I was a college kid. Even back then I was shaking my head at the kids around me. Is this just something everyone does because they are finally out from under their parents’ thumb? It struck me as ridiculous, even to the 19-year-old me. So, I wasn’t enjoying the story because I couldn’t relate. I couldn’t get into any of their experiences but I kept reading. Then I realized what kind of a person she had fallen in love with; a narcissist with no real regard for other humans, someone who regularly, and in every context, only uses the people around him as a means to an end, like tools you find in the shed.

I’ve recently found myself interacting with a person like this as well and it is excruciatingly painful. You spend so much energy trying to reach them. There has to be a person underneath all that pain that has made them act out like this. You know that everyone has their own agenda, their own needs and goals, maybe you can help them through to the other side, maybe you’re the one that clears the shadows out and makes him a better person. That just isn’t possible and it’s not about what you can do. It’s him. It’s a personal journey that only they can travel. You’re just a site along the way.

But it’s so hard for an empathic person to give up and let go. You don’t want to be another painful experience in their life. You want to be the healing for them, the medicine. But the more you try, the more he slips away. It sucks.

The book became personal for me once I got about two-thirds through, as you can probably tell. It was also eye-opening to my situation and healing for my heart, even though my situation was really the same as the characters’ in the book. As I put it down, in tears, something dawned on me. We can’t go looking for the things that help us heal, we have to be open to healing. We don’t know where a path will ultimately lead. We can’t just give up at the first sign of trouble or boredom. We have to follow it through and see where it goes, learn from what we find.

That’s what I did with this book and with the relationship. At first, I was frustrated and then angry, then hurt, but now…well…I can see the important lessons that I was able to learn about myself. I learned how to interact with another type of person (book) and how to learn and react faster next time. I won’t close myself off away from any danger, books or people. I guess I can’t learn much from doing things the way everyone else does, the safe way. I learn best from risk, even though I’m a risk-averse type of person. I’ve been starting to wonder if I was born that way or learned to be that way: a reflection for another time for sure.

Favorite quote:

“Sass, you learn almost everything from your relationships,” CJ said. “They’re how you figure out who you are.”

Some people may take offense at that idea but they’re missing the real point. It’s not that relationships define who you are. It’s more like you can’t really see who you are directly. You can see part of you, but not all of you, not without a mirror. The relationships you get into and out of are like that mirror. The more you have, even the unsuccessful ones, the more glimpses you get. I wish I had known that earlier in my life. I spent my teens and twenties getting into and out of relationships, not to learn about myself but to find a partner to take care of me. How could I find someone to take care of me if I wasn’t sure of who I really was? I did the same with co-workers and friends. “What can you do for me?” was typically my thinking.

Lucky for me, the man I chose just happened to be a perfect match, but I didn’t always think so. We’ve been learning who we are together for the last twenty years. But I’m not talking about only a marriage relationship. Friends, lovers, co-workers, etc. all teach us different things about ourselves. We can’t do it alone. We all learn from each other.

I’ve met a lot of very emotionally immature people lately and I’ve learned something different about myself from every one of them. Hopefully they learned something about themselves by dealing with me. I won’t cut myself off from human contact just because some people can be lame. No one will get anywhere that way!

Pointless Fiction

You know when you learn something about someone that makes you feel less about them? Like you learn something about their past, their feelings about something important to you, the things they did growing up, or the things they do now and you’re like, “Ew. I do not want to get involved with that person!” But maybe if you did, you’d learn something about the world and about yourself; if you could separate the learning from the painful experience of dealing with someone else’s growing pains.

We all experience this with the people we meet, whether we want to or not, but we wouldn’t go looking for it and if we did, we’d be a mess. No one goes looking for pain…but many times painful experiences teach us the most about ourselves.

Reading fiction, novels, lets us do that without so much emotional personal pain. We experience other people’s lives and learn from them, but we don’t hurt from it as much because it’s not real, or if it is kind of real, at least it didn’t happen to us. It’s like looking at Medusa through a mirror. She won’t turn you to stone but she’s still hideous to see.

I’m reading a novel right now that makes me look at my life, my behavior and wonder if I have grown up at all the last 20 years. The characters in it closely resemble characters from my own life in my early twenties. I can identify with many of them and some of them I don’t understand at all, much like some of the people I worked with back then.

It’s fascinating learning from other people’s choices and points of view. Back then, when I was in college, would I have made similar choices if I were in that situation? Would I make different choices now? I believe I would but, to be honest, I’m not so sure. Sometimes I think I’m more mature, more open, more thoughtful, and then sometimes I catch myself falling into a tantrum fit over something instead of having a reasonable conversation. Some things about myself I want to change so badly and I realize there are some things I just need to accept.

But this isn’t about my behavior! It’s about novels and why we read them. Sure, they can be great entertainment, but they can be so much more if you let them, if you read them the right way, with your mind opened to learning from other people’s lives, fictional or not.

The best part about the character in a novel is that you get to hear their thought process, the reasons behind what they are doing. We rarely get that in real life. We only see our side of an argument, of a relationship, or an altercation in the workplace, on the road, etc. We only see our point of view. In a novel, we get to see all of it.

For me, reading novels reminds me that other people in this world are actually people with their own lives and agendas, their own traumatic childhood or disastrous family. The person at the stop sign next to me is not an NPC (non-player character) in my game of life. I had to go ask my son what that’s called, by the way. Do you know what I’m talking about? Those characters in the game that just fill space or give some background to the scene? They don’t really do anything. You can’t interact with them other than push them out of the way or run around them to kill time. The people in the grocery store aren’t like that. If you talk to them, they’ll remember it and go home thinking, “Wow. That person was so nice.” Or “What an ass!” They aren’t always there standing in line behind you or wandering the aisles looking for soup.

We get so wrapped up in our own lives that we start to think of the people around us as NPC’s. But I digress yet again.

Go read a book. Fiction is just as important as non-fiction! We can’t let ourselves get too wrapped up in it though, just like we can’t get too wrapped up in other people’s drama in real life. We learn what we can from story characters. Real people do need a bit more of our attention and love, but the bottom line is that their life is theirs, not ours. Besides, I have too much to read to take on your crazy life as well as my own!

Feeling “Unhealthy”

I’m starting to feel slightly unhealthy about Facebook. I find myself constantly tapping the screen to see if anyone has responded to a recent post or if anything new has come up. I’ll open it for any reason. In the middle of doing the dishes, back from a ten-minute walk, just came out of the shower; check my phone. Once it is open, I feel compelled to reply or scroll just a little. Over the course of the day I lose hours of my time. For what really? If someone wanted to say something that couldn’t wait a day or two, wouldn’t they call or message?

Last month, I decided to take a break. For one week I absolutely refused to check my feed. And it felt good. I felt free and a little lonely. I wrote a note to myself, “Check FB on Fridays between 12pm and 5pm. Leave it alone for the rest of the week.” I did it for two weeks. I did share articles I had read or written, but I didn’t open the app on my phone or my computer until Friday afternoon.

And then my son and I went to Knott’s and he encouraged me to post pictures as we went through our day. I only posted though, waiting until the next day to look at the responses. And then throughout the week I found myself checking it on my phone more and more often; in line at the post office, before I ran into the grocery store, while my made tea, or between writing sessions. Again, I’m right back where I started.

Is there anyone that does not have a love/hate relationship with social media? There are people that aren’t participating at all. They are out there. I’ve met some. I also know quite a few that do participate but regularly post that they hate themselves for it. Then there are people that are constantly there, posting and commenting to their heart’s content. And then there’s me, in and out of it, hoping it’ll get better and wondering what in world I’m even trying to do.

Backtrack a bit here. I was never very good at socializing before social media. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have friends; it just means that I didn’t socialize much. I didn’t go to parties or host them, sit with a bunch of people at lunch and breaks, or go out with a bunch of people after work. Every once in a while an extremely outgoing person would convince me to tag along, but generally, I was a loner. But I did have close friends and good relationships. I never felt lonely.

Then came Facebook. It was so much easier than meeting people in person. I could think about what I was going to say before I said it. People only saw what I wanted them to see. I could walk away for a while when I felt uncomfortable or tired of being there. It gave me enough space to feel comfortable socializing.

I loved Facebook from the moment I found it. A friend of mine suggested I get online and sign up when she learned I would be moving from the area. It would be an easy way to keep in touch with a lot of my homeschooling acquaintances. Once I got home and checked it out, I was hooked. Where once I had a one or two old friends that kept in touch through email and the occasional lunch date, I now had them popping out of the woodwork, so to speak, from as far back as elementary school. It was exciting. I felt popular for the first time in my life.

I started to think that seeing what people posted on Facebook was the same thing as seeing people in person or having a relationship with people. I’m starting to realize that it isn’t. Like drinking a lot of water will make your stomach feel full for a while but won’t sustain you or give you the energy to keep living, I used Facebook to feel like I was getting my needs met socially but finding myself still hungry for connection at the end of the day. After ten years, I’m starting to starve.

Facebook is great for socializing with distant friends and acquaintances, much like the occasional office party or family reunion. And it’s great for seeing your cousin’s newborn baby or your son’s trip to Germany, but it does not replace a relationship with other human beings. Relationships need to be in-person to thrive and grow. Like writing letters or sending the annual Christmas card, Facebook helps us stay connected. But we can’t live on that alone. We need to make time for each other where we can touch each other, share a meal, talk about our lives, and share our feelings.

I recently read an article on Medium by Scott Galloway called “Humans Cannot Survive Alone.” He made a great point about social media. Social media is “Co-opting terms that reflect some better things about our species: like, share, friend, engagement.” I remember reading somewhere about changing the meaning of words and changing society, probably a “1984” reference.

Are we becoming a more passive society because we use these words in the context of social media instead of real life?

We like what a friend shares on social media without really engaging. People don’t read it or discuss it. They agree or argue. They don’t try to learn from each other.

Humans are social animals. We NEED to interact in person not just through the written word. We need to use all our senses in a real relationship, not just our eyes. We get our cues from hearing, seeing, touching, and even smelling and tasting. And different social situations teach us different ways to get along: work, school, family, bar, grocery store, church.

I need to be out among people in different social situations to really thrive emotionally. I need to be able to reach across a table and hold someone’s hand, to hug them hello or goodbye, to laugh and cry and hear their laughter and tears in return. But seeing people on Facebook from the comfort of my own home is so much easier, just like watching videos about working out and reading commentary is a lot easier than going to the gym or going on a long hike. It just isn’t healthy.

Our physical interaction with each other teaches us, feeds us. We each have different levels of need, sure, but we can’t survive without it completely. I think we crave it and that may be part of what is creating a lot of anger and depression in us all. We lash out on social media like frustrated toddlers.

Another thing I’m wondering is if staying in contact with everyone we have ever met is creating stagnation in us. Before social media, we lost friends and acquaintances over time. If we left a school or changed jobs, we’d keep a couple of our closest friends, but our acquaintances would fade into the background. Maybe that was good for us, like sloughing old skin. Have we become dull?

I’m not leaving Facebook. It’s a wonderful and amazing tool. It’s great for businesses and communities. I have met new people there, found old friends and started up new relationships, and found places to go and adventures to go on. I post there to share with my family and friends the things I find interesting and enlightening. I like using it as a public scrapbook. But I need to start being in the world again, joining a club, meeting for lunch dates, inviting people over for parties.

The trouble for me is that I’m still not good at socializing and building relationships and now it’s just too easy to opt out and view the world from the safety of my phone screen. I can drink a big glass of water or two and feel full for a while, but I’m still starving.

Real Love Sets Us Free

I found Wild Woman Sisterhood about a year ago and have loved just about everything they post. I am only saddened by the negativity of the Facebook comments they seem to get. I’m not sure if it’s social media itself or the people that tend to follow, but many commenters seem so self-centered, immature, and negative. Then again, maybe it’s just the written word that causes the confusion. It’s hard to write one or two lines and get a solid meaning across.

When I see a post on any page that I can’t get behind or doesn’t apply to me, I just keep scrolling. I’m sure it’s out in the universe for someone. That someone isn’t me at the moment. There are times when I do make a comment when I disagree, but it’s usually because I know the person that posted it personally. I’m talking to them directly, just as if they had said something over coffee. I don’t agree and I want to talk about that. But I’d never do that to a stranger and I especially wouldn’t do it on a social media post.

Maybe I just use it differently.

They posted something beautiful this morning and I felt compelled to add my own ideas to it. I kept thinking about it all morning. I even talked about it with my son as we went hiking through the desert.

My morning routine was broken up today because he wanted to go hiking and, since it’s warming up out here in the desert, it couldn’t wait until the afternoon. After a lunch, a rest, and the dishes, I sat down to write, and the idea was still swimming around in my heart.

Here’s the quote.

And this was my comment.

Such a beautiful sentiment!

A caged bird is “loved” too. But the best love is the kind that supports freely, the kind that makes you feel like you can do anything, including walking away.

That kind of love is precious.

I’m bound to my love, not because I feel like I have to stay but because I want to, because here, with my partner’s love, is where I grow and thrive best!

And then, when someone insisted that a caged bird is not really loved at all…

The person who caged it does believe they love it. They love it as an object to be taken care of like a book, pen, or chair.

Humans should never be loved that way, but we often treat each other as objects instead of beings. That doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. It means we haven’t grown enough to know the difference yet.

It takes a strong person to love another human as a separate being and not an object.

Lovers that treat their partners as objects to be kept, get scared and angry when their love isn’t returned or if their partner changes their mind.

Parents treat their children as pets, something to be controlled and cared for, instead of distinct individuals with their own wants, needs, and agendas.

And sometimes we treat our friends that way when we insist that they spend time with us and only us, as if they aren’t living their own life when we aren’t around.

Loving someone and letting them go, allowing them the space to be free, to say no to us, to walk away, is terrifying.

What if they find someone better? If you loved them, you’d want them to if they could.

What if they grow away from me? If you loved them, you’d want them to be the best they can be with or without you.

What if? Don’t ruin the time you have with your loved ones worrying about the future. Love them completely right now, so if the worst happens, you have all those beautiful memories to look back on.

If you LOVE someone, something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back…

Hunt it down! That’s what my Grandpa used to laugh and say! But we all know that just doesn’t work. The caged bird is safe and secure, but it will never fulfill its true reason for being on this earth.

The caged human is the same. She will never reach her own potential. He will never be who he was truly meant to be.

Love them but do not cage them. Support them, share with them, help them, but set them free and watch what they become.

For the Love of Books

There are few books that are so good, so touching, so relevant, that I have to close them and get a grip on myself while I read. I couldn’t keep reading this book until I didn’t have any more time, I had to only read until my heart couldn’t take anymore and needed some time to recover!

How did I accidentally come across such a wonderful book? Did someone recommend it to me? Was it on a list of “must reads” that I found somewhere? Not at all. Once again, a book I sorely needed fell into my path and I picked it up. And I will never regret it.
A few weeks ago, you may remember, I had an urge to visit the closest physical new book store over 60 miles away. It was an adventure for sure. That’s where I found this book. I posted about it HERE.
I had started to read it in line at the bookstore and continued in the car while I ate lunch that day. I instantly fell in love…ok maybe I just lusted after a new book, I don’t know. The cover was so romantic and the back beckoned me to open it and dive in. Unfortunately, after that little taste of love, I had to go home and finish the book I was already reading, but that wasn’t too much trouble. I was loving The Brothers Karamazov anyway and had to find out what was going to happen to Ivan before I found out why Perdue was so lovesick!
Once I got started, I swam through it in under 9 hours. I devoured it with my eyes. It broke my heart and then healed it. So much beauty! To me, the best part was that these characters were older, like me, not young twenty-somethings. They had lived, lost, re-lived, and just started living. It praised patience, kindness, and various kinds of love under different circumstances. It showed me people who ran out and got what they needed when they needed it, even in their 50’s and 60’s. I loved every page of it and closed it in tears of joy.
“With all due respect, what you read is more important in the long term than the man you marry, ma chere Madame.”
True? I think so! What you read teaches you how to live with others, how to get along with anyone.
It’s going to be hard to limit my quotes from this book. I underlined a spectacular line on just about every page! Here’s another one:
“Books aren’t eggs, you know. Simply because a book has aged a bit doesn’t mean it’s gone bad.” “What is wrong with old? Age isn’t a disease. We all grow old, even books. But are you, is anyone, worth less, or less important, because they’ve been around for longer?”
How many times have I heard THAT argument? “This book isn’t relevant to our age!” While that may be true for instruction manuals, it is rarely true about anything else. To relate to each other today, we have to understand our past. You can’t set aside a book, or a person, because of their age.
One of the sweetest ideas in this book is his idea of a “Literary Apothecary.” He wanted to create an encyclopedia of little emotions. He prescribes books to heal ailments. Can you just imagine it? How about this one…
“Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you’ve got those autumn blues. And some…well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful void. Like a short, torrid love affair.”
Human emotion, human relationships, are just so amazingly varied and delicate. I want that encyclopedia! I want that apothecary to prescribe just what I need and it seems he did through this book. It broke my heart into little pieces and I loved every second of it!
I’ll be here all day if I keep thumbing through and commenting on every line of this book. Go get it! You won’t regret it.