“We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”
— B.F. Skinner
… because reading is a peek into someone else’s mind, a spark for the imagination caused by a glimpse into someone else’s imagination, a tap into the wine of someone else’s insight, uninterrupted except by the pauses during which you choose to revel or reflect.
I looked over at the turntable after writing that little paragraph and thought about musicians polishing their recordings to perfection, as well as the beauty of live recordings. There is no substitute, perhaps, for an actual conversation, messy as it is, but a book or a record is a next best. And in the case of the dearly departed, it is the only way to have that conversation.
So yes, we should first teach a love of reading rather than great books, because a love of reading will lead you to the books you consider great, and if you start with somebody else’s idea of a great book, you may never kindle a love of reading in the first place.
Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing week. Sunday morning brings a new start, another round of seven days. Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing year. Jan. 1 brings another cycle of days and weeks and months. We are a rare set of generations, who are able to have said Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing century, a new cycle of years, and Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing millennium, a new cycle of centuries.
In truth, they are all reflections of the daily celebration — new sets of dawns, new sets of awakenings, new sets of stretching rested limbs and reaching for purpose and meaning.
A week ago I was agnostic on the concept of affirmation. Then I happened to decide I wanted to write about a most innocuous phrase — “Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing day” — and for a night I strove to remember that phrase, trying to hold onto it so I wouldn’t forget it in the morning, another victim of my seeming refusal to sleep with writing implements next to the bed.
In the morning I was a prime example of the old saw, “You become what you think about,” “As a man thinks, so he is.” I was grateful for having held the thought all night, but more important, I was optimistically thanking God for this most amazing day. I was seeing the miracle in a new day bursting with potential. I didn’t drag myself out of bed thinking, Oh, Lord, I’m stiff and sore and what am I going to write about and do I even care to write anything today. I sprang to my writing room, grabbed my journal and wrote, “Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing day.”
And so I am a convert of sorts. I always bought into the concept, but now I have inadvertently discovered how to do it “right”: Hold that thought. Keep in the back of your mind that there’s something important you want to remember, and it will surface and sustain.
Actually, that’s not quite true, is it? I have had plenty of times, mostly after vivid dreams, when I woke in the night determined to remember, only to be left with merely a vague memory of the feeling but no details when morning arrived. Why did it work this time? I can’t honestly say, unless there was something divine or supernatural at play, or unless the words drilled the feeling into me, or unless the words expressed simply and efficiently a truth I’d been struggling to express for a very long time, or unless — why am I overthinking this? I’m simply glad, grateful and happy the phrase survived the night, because now I’m locked into committing that attitude to paper and to practice.
Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing day, for a new dawn, another rebirth like the thousands you gave me before and the unknown many ahead, but most of all for this one, today, when I have direct control over my actions. It’s up to me to negotiate the twists and turns, and it’s likely to be quite the journey, because every day is a small version of the longer and bigger journey we all travel, each in our own way. May I hold this spirit of gratitude in my heart the rest of the way.
This most amazing day does not begin with a trumpet fanfare proclaiming itself to the universe, unless you count a slow, steady emerging light defeating darkness as a fanfare — although you have to admit, wiping darkness off the landscape is a pretty good trick. An hour ago you couldn’t see a darn thing without a flashlight of some kind, and even then shadows were everywhere, and now this most amazing day is here.
Still, by all signs this day is identical to any other day and every other day, except for the ingredients we pour into it.
Those magical supernatural ingredients — the choices we make, the people we encounter, the unexpected delights, the unexpected disappointments, the expected quotidian, the bullets dodged, the hits taken — all of them are stirred into a stew that is at once sweet and bitter, spicy and bland, epic and ordinary, and the finished chowder is assigned a date and filed into a big bin labeled “another day” or “one in a million I’ll always remember.”
What does it take to tip the scales for memorable? I dare say it involves starting the day with the intention to tip those scales. I am not so naive as to believe that saying, “Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing day” will make all the difference, but I am optimistic enough to believe it will make a difference.
How much difference depends on all sorts of factors. Now, all sorts of cliches are shouting for my attention as I try to make this point. Probably the predominant one is, “You can’t always control what happens, but you can control your reaction.”
I used to say “goddamit” a lot, and from time to time (heavens to Murgatroyd) I still do. Once upon a time, I vowed to say the less explosive “God bless America” instead. (Now, don’t get all political on me, just roll with the thought that “God bless America” is a gentler oath than “goddamit.”) I had to train myself out of the more vulgar habit, and I still often pause after shouting “God —” allowing a split-second to remind myself to call for a blessing rather than a damnation.
In the same way it takes some self=training to pause and remember what a most amazing day this is — one of a kind, never to be repeated exactly the same way. And isn’t it a blessing that the most awful thing won’t happen again? And isn’t it a blessing to remember to savor the most wonderful thing that won’t happen again quite like it did today?
Remember, and remember. That’s what a memory is, after all.
