Wise guy
One of these days our house is going to disappear into a big hole in the ground with a resounding kerfluuumph.
Not because we live on an earthquake fault or over some old abandoned coal mine. Because of the books. The ever-growing number of books.
They come at us from all directions. Bookstores, garage sales, libraries, friends and relatives. Books and more books. I can hear the basement walls crumbling as I write this.
Some of our books come from the paper where Carol works. Big city papers get dozens of books every day, from publishers hoping they’ll review them. Alas, most of them get carted off by reporters and editors. (They buy them and the money goes into a scholarship fund.)
Which brings me to this week’s subject.
The other day Carol brought home a book called The Passion Test: The Effortless Path To Discovering Your Destiny. I can’t believe Carol would actually read such an icky sounding book. But apparently she is. When I was making the bed this morning, I found it on her nightstand, with the dust jacket flap stuck between pages 24 and 25.
The authors, a married couple, apparently have written this book to encourage people to, as the great philosopher Joseph Campbell used to say, follow their bliss.
As part of their research, they asked a group of college students to tell them their passions. Here they are:
· Living in a beautiful home in which I feel perfectly at peace.
· Writing successful mystery novels.
· Working in a nurturing environment with lots of plants and light.
· Enjoying perfect health with lots of energy, stamina and vitality.
· Having fun with everything I do.
· Spending lots of quality time with my family.
· Enjoying great sex on a regular basis.
· Working with a supportive team of people who share my values.
First of all, this is a real book. I’m not making it up. That writing mystery novels thing was actually on the list.
Secondly, I pretty much go along with the list. I have been out of college for 35 years, of course, so my version of the list is slightly jaundiced by reality:
· One cannot feel perfectly at peace in a beautiful home. Beautiful homes take way too much work. Peace comes with dust and dirty dishes and the acceptance thereof.
· Saying you want to write successful novels is just saying you want to be successful, i.e. rich and famous. Of course, we all want that, and will keep trying right up to the day we die. But the real goal ought to be living a successful life. And that has nothing to do with success.
· Working in a nurturing environment? During my college years I worked in a filthy dirty factory with asbestos flying about, with a bunch of grizzled old lifers barking from emphysema. That was all the nurturing I needed to get my butt in gear.
· Re the perfect health thing: Whoever came up with that one must still be young enough to look at themselves naked in a mirror without crying. As long as I can open the refrigerator I’m satisfied.
· Having fun with everything I do: See nurturing environment above.
· Quality time with family: Get down off that cloud as fast as you can. The best you can hope for is quantity time.
· Great sex on a regular basis: Oh you crazy kid, you! When you get my age you’ll realize that regular sex on a somewhat regular basis would be great.
· Working with a supportive team of people who share my values: I’d settle for a dog that doesn’t go crazy when the mailman pulls up.
