I don’t carefully plan—and yet it’s uncanny how often I seem to be reading just the right book at just the right time. Sometimes I feel compelled to read a book—or someone feels compelled to recommend it—for reasons I can’t discern, and only later do I find it’s essential to me, right then. Not before I started reading it, but after. The book may seem random when I choose it, but halfway through I realize, I need this right now. Call it chance, or fate, or divine providence. Blame it on probabilities or my own state of mind—when the student is ready, the teacher appears, etcetera. Credit it to
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