Random readings...
I've heard someone say that if one's perturbed and is looking for something to assuage the disquiet, one should open a random page in a book (also picked without prior planning) and read the contents of that page. There'll be something in there that will be apt to that situation. On a whim, I decided to try it out today, and chanced upon the following text:
[...]It's looking bad for Chris. For a while he was way ahead of me and now he sits under a tree and rests. He doesn't look at me, and that's how I know it's bad.
I sit down next to him and his expression is distant. His face is flushed and I can see he's exhausted. We sit and listen to the wind through the pines.
I know he'll eventually get up and keep going but he doesn't know this, and is afraid to face the possibility that he may not be able to climb the mountain at all. I remember something Phaedrus had written about these mountains and tell it to Chris now.[...]
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
The rest is a conversation that goes beyond this page, and hence I'm not going to mention it here.
Now for the million dollar question: Does it work? In a way it read exactly what I needed to read (though I did think it was a bit biased,as it's from a book that I'm still thinking about finishing
.). I've been thinking about climbing mountains (I have an open ticket for the Himalayas, if somebody cares to join), and sometimes think it is quite a difficult task. The excerpt says (like a good friend of mine always says) &mdash have patience. And that's what I intend to do. So I guess it did work. :)
Try it out sometime, may be it'll work for you too. :)