Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Weight of Books

Nothing is heavier than books. Not granite, not lead, not McDonald's regulars, not even the 4 liters of water that my Japanese friend's parents-in-law insisted on taking to Germany because they didn't trust the local supply. The only time I've ever paid extra for luggage on a plane was due to books. Psychology books, which it seems have to be heavy due to some bizarre perceived correlation between weight and worth. My maternal grandfather was a collector of books. In particular fully illustrated books on birds and leather bound 'complete works of....'. I grew up surrounded by books because my mother had inherited her father's love of them; and after he died she also inherited his books, which my father built numerous capacious shelves for (without a spirit level he liked to boast). The shelves groaned audibly and I swear the house sunk an inch or two for each year we lived there.
     E-book readers have helped keep my luggage within the ever more strictly enforced airline weight limits, but in one important way they haven't made books lighter. I had a dream last night that prompted this post. I was back at university and I went to see a lecturer for a consultation about a piece of coursework I had submitted. He was an amalgamation of the nightmare head of department that Tony bests in the second season of Skins and Matt the killer from Top of the Lake. I got short shrift in the consultation and was gathering my books afterwards, but there seemed to be an increasing number of them, which I couldn't lift. An element of the dream was the recurring dread that I am unprepared for an exam and it is getting too late to catch up. I woke up feeling bad from the dream, but with a growing relief as I awoke to the reality that such fears are behind me. But what does the books being heavy signify?
     For me it's the weight of reverence that books engender. I grew up thinking it was a crime to mark a page by turning down the corner, and that not finishing a book I had started was a potentially cataclysmic failure of self-discipline with the added sin of disrespect to the author (to whose stature I could only dimly aspire). A year ago I finished my third degree (in Psychology you may have guessed). I spent too large a part of the following months getting a place on the Phd program and was absolutely convinced that's how I wanted to spend the next five years....until I wasn't. I confronted my misgivings and changed my mind. I'm going to coach, and teach (as far as possible unencumbered by textbooks) and I'm only going to read what I want to read, which doesn't mean not tackling the tough stuff if it seems like it will reward the effort. I've got my Kindle, and a variety of novels and tomes weighing down my Ikea shelves, but the weight of books is lifting month by month and I feel like our old house, rising again from the earth, lighter, more playful, less reverent.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

What WILL they put on your gravestone?

"Don't spend too long on that, they won't put it on your gravestone," are words, or words to that effect, we have all heard many times. Take a walk through a graveyard and stop for a read from time to time and you'll see that what actually gets put on gravestones are things like: "To Ethel, wife and mother, she will be sorely missed," or "For Fred, husband to Lottie, the world is a richer place because he lived." And that's flattering headstone engravers by picking the most imaginative examples and misquoting them by erring on the side of interesting. So what is really meant to be implied as the opposite of what they won't put on your gravestone?
     In the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman film ‘Being John Malkovich,’ Maxine says: “I think the world is divided into those who go after what they want and then those who don’t. The passionate ones….they may not get what they want, but at least they remain vital, so when they lie on their death beds they have few regrets…and the ones who don’t go after what they want, well who gives a shit about them anyway.” That’s a  brutal assessment, but after many years of reflection, the truth in it to me is this. We learn to associate getting what we want with the bratty child who wants a new toy or to get their own way; or with the unscrupulous businessperson or politician who will stop at nothing to achieve wealth or power.  But if you look deeper, what you want is at the core of who you are and is the source of your most intense motivations and reserves of energy. When you are going after what you want you will have more vigour and staying power and although it won’t necessarily be the easy way it will feel good on balance because you will be being true to yourself and, in the deepest sense of the phrase, you will be doing your best. If you act from the core of who you are, you are going after what you want; and people will care because they will see that who you are and what you do matters. And that's the mark you will leave on the world and thus what will be left of you after you're gone: an epitaph worth carving in stone.
     A better question is therefore: what do you want them to put on your gravestone? What I want on mine is something like: Rob Russell was a true friend who lived courageously and brought insight and stimulation wherever he went. I've still got some work to do to live up to that, but why leave writing your epitaph until it's too late to be of any use to you?  What do you want on your gravestone?