This post is a perfect stone to kill two birds with (forgive the expression); the one bird being to explain why I have posted nothing for some time, and the other bird being to explain where I’m at in life right now.
I’ve got over 15+ books with book marks in them that I am actively trying to get through. I find it hard to put them aside for any greater amount of time, and this makes finishing any of them slower than it would if I was only reading that one. Last night I was reading a book with my son about sea animals, and it aroused in me my continual and persistent fascination with deep sea creatures. So I found some videos on YouTube and there went an hour of my time. An hour I could have been reading one of the 15+ books; an hour I could have been writing; an hour I could have yada yada.
I got this overwhelming sense of wanting to do so many things and learn so many things and having inadequate time to do them all NOW. My friends know this about me, that I’ve got two bathroom books I read while sittin’ there (one for work, one for home), one car book I read when at stop lights, and others that I fit in whenever I get a chance. I was reminded of something I have not yet personally read (another one not YET in my 15+ stack), but that my wife (and fellow soldier in the war against book-terror, finding victory one book at a time) read to me from “A Study in Scarlet” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr. Watson is surprised at how Sherlock Holmes knows about all there is to know of certain fields of knowledge, but next to nothing about about things like contemporary literature, philosophy, politics, and the composition of the solar system). Sherlock Holmes replies:
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” [Dr. Watson] protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
I don’t exactly think it’s true that I’ll run out of space in my mind, nor do I find things like the universe (or deep sea creatures) useless knowledge; but I do know that I run out of time, and it’s important for me to choose exactly what I do with my time–which books I read, which events I partake in, which things I commit to, etc. Because to do otherwise is to let time slip between my fingers like beach sand. Okay, do I sound a little compulsive yet? I fear so.
I received some encouragement from a monthly newsletter I receive from Stand To Reason this month in which Greg Koukl wrote the article Why Settle for Merely Reading a Book When You Can Master It?. He assured readers that it is more important to read one thing slowly, contemplatively, reflectively, enough so that at least a familiarity of the thing’s content remains accessible to our memory, than to read many things quickly that we very quickly forget.
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