№2 - A Remembrance
Last fall, I did something I do not think I have ever done with a book before. I re-read it. A small gesture that for most of my life filled me with a sense of omniscience and thus boredom about revisiting it. I usually found myself without enough time, needing to hurry back to the newer releases waiting on my shelf to stay on my imaginary track. It is an exhausting endeavor. Always running, and shaming yourself for reading "too little" or "too slow." When I feel like I know what is going to happen, I stop enjoying what I read. Instead, my mind races to the point where I can reinforce my own superiority of "knowing."
Picking up a book I had loved before, and which I knew felt like a soft hug, was a choice I found myself willing to do again. To opt-out for a while and slow down the hunger for productivity. Re-reading it a second time. A third. It was wonderful! I found myself able to sit back, lower my shoulders, and take a deep breath. What I was reading was enough. I didn't need to go any faster or differently. I could just read when I felt like it or committed to it through my bedtime routine.
I know I was seeking something in the book this time. A part of myself that I wanted to try to understand better by revisiting the story and the characters. I don't know if I found it, but I found a grander love for the gentle and quiet, the slow and humble. An enoughness which did not base its values on newer or more.
Have you learned something about yourself from rereading?
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