A few months back I attempted to read THE BOOK that a gazillion people recommended, and that kept popping up every time I turned around, even going so far as to one day fall from a high shelf and hit me on the head.
Being the bright girl that I am, I thought perhaps it might be time to actually read THE BOOK. I opened it up late one night before bed, and was able to fall asleep more quickly than ever before in my entire life. I tried again and again - even during hours I should not be sleepy. This author's written voice simply did not speak to me yet, I felt it was an important topic and I wanted in on what others had learned.
I struggled through the preface, the intro (never have understood why anyone would need both) and about half of chapter one, feeling as though I'd be dead before I ever finished it, when all the sudden one day, it dawned on me that I didn't have to read it. I'm 43 years old and quite capable of making what may appear to be rational decisions most of the time. The book had not been assigned reading for me over Christmas Holiday and there would be no 10 page summaries due either - ever, in fact, unless 10 page self help book summaries are the kind of thing I decided I might like to take up as a hobby.
The next morning, I sat at my desk (because I had tried everything could think of including reading it during work time to see if the naughtiness that comes with reading during work hours may just make it feel more illicit and thus more tempting) when I took one last look at THE BOOK, and put it back on the bookshelf in complete and utter surrender, while saying "Hey, I can't get into THE BOOK even though 5.32 million other people could, but as a gift to myself, I'm just not gonna read the damn thing".
There was a certain thrill in stating "I'm not going to read the damn thing". I felt like a rebel with a cause. The cause: to keep extreme boredom from my very own life.
I talked about it publicly too, I told my pals that I loved them, but that if they ever recommended a dry book like that again, we would find ourselves at the beginning of some trust issues.
I even considered that just as we translate Great American Novels to German and say, Swahili, perhaps we needed to take dry books like the aforementioned and translate them into the non-foreign language of humor.
It was wonderful learning enough to A) recognize I have a choice B) realize I was actually respecting my own time and C) know I'd better be damn certain that anything I ever wrote would be accused of being dull or boring.
It did cross my mind that I was saying it was boring so that I didn't have to learn yet another 6.73 million daunting lessons. Sure, that was possible, but by not reading this book last August, didn't mean I'd never read THE BOOK ever......
One thing was for sure - it was not time to read it then, and I am resting easy in that knowledge still.
