Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "adventure"
Attitude
I'm in New Orleans, and I've seen the gamut of attitudes. The friendly trolley drivers who answer the same questions over and over with humor and patience. The bored, tattooed, pierced and ill-mannered clerk who lets the old man in line ahead of me know what a pain he is for not knowing what she knows in all her eighteen years of wisdom. The tourists who represent every attitude from "Oh my goodness" to "How cool" to "Get me out of here".
I saw a poster that said something like "The difference between a catastrophe and an adventure is all in your attitude." That's not quite true: New Orleans faced a real catastrophe that hasn't faded from memory. Everywhere you hear references to "before Katrina" or "when Katrina hit..." But as far as their attitude goes, I have to say, these people haven't lost their sense of adventure.
I saw a poster that said something like "The difference between a catastrophe and an adventure is all in your attitude." That's not quite true: New Orleans faced a real catastrophe that hasn't faded from memory. Everywhere you hear references to "before Katrina" or "when Katrina hit..." But as far as their attitude goes, I have to say, these people haven't lost their sense of adventure.
What I Love About Books
They end.
Where else in life do you get the satisfaction of completion that you get with a book? Housework is infinitely renewable. You can clean the sink today, but it will need it again tomorrow. Our jobs seldom allow everything to be sewn up tightly at the end of a day, a week, or even a year. And relationships are notoriously messy. They never all get combed neatly into place.
But a book! When you're done, you're done. Everything is known. The author has told all, and you have absorbed it, savored it, finished with it. In addition, everything is left in place. If for some reason you should return to reread that book later, it will not have changed one iota. No new smudges, no starting over to learn the ropes, no irrational switches in character since last time.
Each new book is an adventure in itself. Some allow us to have similar adventures if we enjoy the first one: same characters, different day. But when you close that book at "The End", it is something you've accomplished complete. Done. What a feeling!
Where else in life do you get the satisfaction of completion that you get with a book? Housework is infinitely renewable. You can clean the sink today, but it will need it again tomorrow. Our jobs seldom allow everything to be sewn up tightly at the end of a day, a week, or even a year. And relationships are notoriously messy. They never all get combed neatly into place.
But a book! When you're done, you're done. Everything is known. The author has told all, and you have absorbed it, savored it, finished with it. In addition, everything is left in place. If for some reason you should return to reread that book later, it will not have changed one iota. No new smudges, no starting over to learn the ropes, no irrational switches in character since last time.
Each new book is an adventure in itself. Some allow us to have similar adventures if we enjoy the first one: same characters, different day. But when you close that book at "The End", it is something you've accomplished complete. Done. What a feeling!
