gillpolack @ 2011-06-02T18:34:00

It doesn't matter what I read today, my mind keeps coming back to the fact that the Big Message books and the writers who get written up as change agents mostly only change their immediate world, the world that's already convinced that they will change when they read this book or this author. Not always, Sometimes it's possible to pick up a big name book and have your world shatter and crystallise into a new form as a result.

Mostly it's the quieter stories, the ones that don't get the attention that provoke real change. This is partly because they *are* quieter - there isn't a big public reaction, readers don't know what to expect: this means that the reader can react to the book in their own way and carry more of it away with them.

Challenge doesn't provoke change nearly as easily as does taking something into one's heart. If it's soapbox vs a cup of tea and a scone, the cup of tea and a scone wins hands down ninety nine times out of a hundred. Soapbox gets told it wins, however, because, let's face it, it's easier to talk about a soapbox message. For one thing, it's not so personal.

Eventually, if you add my posts together over a long period of time, you might get one decent thought. Today's part-thought has to be added to several posts from the last three months. It's not quite one decent thought yet, but maybe, one day...