It’s been raining all week and cabin fever is setting in, so one option is to find something new and stimulating to read. Otherwise I’ll be left with my own thoughts….which are already starting to look for a way onto my notepad!
Nothing on my shelves at home, except stuff I already know about……like how to get healthy, calm my world, enjoy the arts, explore the quantum science of spirituality, etc. You know….pretty much like everyone’s book shelves.
Some quality time in my local public library……that would be great.
I know, I know, I might be outta luck…….with the world in such a financial mess, and political unrest (call it political introspection, if you will) in many countries these days, all the books with all the good info (the ‘answers’), will probably already be checked out, or flying off the shelves as I get there!
But this doesn’t appear to be the case……the shelves are still quite full, thank heavens. Not very many people in the book sections, and this has been the norm, whenever I’ve been there.
The library section that contains about a dozen computers, is quite busy and there are folks waiting to have their turn to use the computers. (I wonder if the information they are seeking is all around them.)
I head for the sports section to see what the experts have written about running and walking, ‘cause I got a mystery to solve…..
“How the heck does it happen that I keep getting pebbles down inside my running shoes, under my feet? I’m walking on pavement, for crying out loud!”
As I browse my way up and down the aisles of book shelves, with the many titles offering solutions to anything and everything (except, it appears, the mystery of how the stones keep getting in my shoes), I recollect a quotation that is in a prominent place in my daytimer:
“Western philosophers are be-deviled by the discovery that they cannot think outside certain well-worn ruts – new philosophies turn out to be restatements of ancient positions, monist or pluralist, realist, or nominalist, vitalist or mechanist.
This is because these are the only alternatives which the conventions of thought can present, and they cannot discuss anything else without presenting it in their own terms. When we try to represent a third dimension upon a two-dimensional surface, it will of necessity seem to belong more or less to the two-dimensional.”
(I would like to give credit for the above quotation. I’ll include the author when I find the source of the quote.)
I think there needs to be a whole section of empty shelves in every library. You see, the present shelves are already filled with ‘solutions’ or ‘answers’ to where the world was yesterday…..and have you taken a peek at the world lately?
For someone who has used libraries for many, many years, reading the various books, or scanning chapters of random books, it appears to me that some of the ‘theories of life’ are coming around again, although with slightly different packaging. Are we not noticing?
Unfortunately, what we think we already know, may not be hugely important. Or it may be preventing new stuff from getting in to our heads where we can examine it clearly.
Maybe by convincing ourselves we need to know all about yesterday (so we don’t repeat it) has resulted in our being fixated on trying to handle stuff with old, out-dated info and solutions…..’the old tried and true.’
So, empty shelves in the library…..in expectation of breakthrough material (that may be already written) that we haven’t yet accepted because it looks too farfetched.
And for me, how do I know what should be on those shelves?
Hint: If I think I know, then there is probably a huge suspicion that it is because it is already in my mental archives, and since it ain’t me saving the world……then maybe for me to get to ‘I don’t know, and don’t even know what I don’t know’……would be a good place from which to start.
That would really matter! No kidding!
Rich