Day 3,325

Growth:

Okay, I know I sound like a broken record with Fahrenheit 451, but there are so many beautiful nuggets tucked away in its pages. Now in my third reading (and fourth as I’m also listening to the audiobook) I’m continuing to catch and understand more of the insights. Here’s the one that has been sticking with me recently.

“I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic,” said Faber. “It would be funny if it were not serious. It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books… The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.  Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. “

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Appreciation:

Interesting how we start to see so much of the world so much more clearly as we grow older and gain more experience (and hopefully a little wisdom). While there are a handful of project I want to start or goals I would like to start working towards I’m seeing more and more that I’ve got to get better and better at finishing first. With that in mind I did the right thing and worked on photos and videos from our recent Grand Canyon trip in order to get them into one organized place and to cull the herd from hundreds to the handful which will pay back the most memory dividends. Tedious, not my favorite thing to do, but that just made it all the more rewarding to wrap up!

Presence:

Gavin got a bit of the Grandpa Pete experience today even though Dad passed about seven and a half years ago. One thing I’ve found is to share in experiences with what my boys are interested in, today that was in watching the Packers get beaten down by the Lions. In one specific instance I’m pretty sure Dad possessed me and started hollering at the TV over a a horrible play by the Pack, just as I’d heard him do so many times as a kid during the Brett Favre era. Gavin’s eyes went from huge to laughing at the craziness of the outburst. What can I say, I was present in the moment! 😂

Thanks!!!