(no subject)
One of the highest compliments I can give you is "You've given me much to think about." It's also probably the most common compliment I give. Odds are, if you're reading this, you have, intentionally or otherwise, given me much to think about (it's not always profound; a discussion on the weather can lead to surprising insights if you're not afraid to think in metaphor). Hell, odds are, if you're not reading this, you've given me much to think about. However, the odds also say that you haven't heard me say it. And for good reason: I don't have time to give compliments, heartfelt though they are; I'm busy thinking. More correctly, I'm distracted thinking. "Business" and "thought" are pretty much at the opposite ends of the scale.
After a few years of dealing with the possible gain of insight through potentially any stimulus, you develop a sense of appreciation for the ripple chains that link the most insignificant events together- for want of a nail, the kingdom may have been lost, but that's just the begining: a small hop of a few inches in a tidepool before the ocean. There's much magic in those, but you can't overthink it. To paraphrase my boy Chesterton, seek to get your head into heaven, don't worry about getting heaven into your head.
There were eight people in Gregory house at the begining of the semester: me, Shavkat, Mary, Eve, Gabe, Brian, Bill, and Jen. Jen left a few months ago, but before that, at one point, those of us in Nat Sci 2 had a little study session, and Jen's father happened to be with us. Naturally, we got off onto a tangent, and with an additional viewpoint (and an interesting one, I might add), we went off on an enormous tangent loop with a diameter of goodness-knows. Eventually, it was just me and her father, everyone else having wandered away. It was far more interesting than Cuvier, I'll tell you that much. A few days later, he came back, dropping off some books he'd brought over in an attempt to make space (I can understand the feeling, but I could never carry through the action. If I live to be an old man and you come to visit, you'll notice my house is huge, since whenever I'll've run out of book space, I'll've built an addtition on to the house, since that'd be easier for me than getting rid of them.). There was a big bag he left in the common room for a while, but two of the books he took out and gave me seperately. One of them I haven't read yet, but the other was Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I put it on the shelf and forgot about it until a week or two ago, when I idly picked it up and starting reading. It gave me a helluva lot to think about and proved most enlightening. Go read it. Now.
After a few years of dealing with the possible gain of insight through potentially any stimulus, you develop a sense of appreciation for the ripple chains that link the most insignificant events together- for want of a nail, the kingdom may have been lost, but that's just the begining: a small hop of a few inches in a tidepool before the ocean. There's much magic in those, but you can't overthink it. To paraphrase my boy Chesterton, seek to get your head into heaven, don't worry about getting heaven into your head.
There were eight people in Gregory house at the begining of the semester: me, Shavkat, Mary, Eve, Gabe, Brian, Bill, and Jen. Jen left a few months ago, but before that, at one point, those of us in Nat Sci 2 had a little study session, and Jen's father happened to be with us. Naturally, we got off onto a tangent, and with an additional viewpoint (and an interesting one, I might add), we went off on an enormous tangent loop with a diameter of goodness-knows. Eventually, it was just me and her father, everyone else having wandered away. It was far more interesting than Cuvier, I'll tell you that much. A few days later, he came back, dropping off some books he'd brought over in an attempt to make space (I can understand the feeling, but I could never carry through the action. If I live to be an old man and you come to visit, you'll notice my house is huge, since whenever I'll've run out of book space, I'll've built an addtition on to the house, since that'd be easier for me than getting rid of them.). There was a big bag he left in the common room for a while, but two of the books he took out and gave me seperately. One of them I haven't read yet, but the other was Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I put it on the shelf and forgot about it until a week or two ago, when I idly picked it up and starting reading. It gave me a helluva lot to think about and proved most enlightening. Go read it. Now.