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03d6332
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And if the book is too silly, I find that it's often because the writer doesn't really have anything to say - or there are no values. Or because the whole book is just a lead-up to a trick at the end. If you read the end first, you may have much less patience for wasting time with that kind of book. Even a well-written book can be silly and a waste of time.
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silliness
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Will Schwalbe |
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2165293
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the apartment is an oasis - of civility, kindness, and elegance.
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Will Schwalbe |
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70c006e
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I like books. I don't read them. But I like them.
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Will Schwalbe |
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ec10c6c
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Oh, dear--did I forget to mention that you can, indeed, have it all, but you need a lot of help!
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women-s-roles
help
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Will Schwalbe |
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2a50fbd
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You should tell your family every day that you love them. And make sure they know that you're proud of them too.
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Will Schwalbe |
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a30d141
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1. Ask: "Do you want to talk about how you're feeling?" 2. Don't ask if there's anything you can do. Suggest things, or if it's not intrusive, just do them. 3. You don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough."
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Will Schwalbe |
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6743243
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It's a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he's feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. "Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may th..
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Will Schwalbe |
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27de451
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sThat's enriched my life more than I can say. Of course you could do more--you can always do more, and you should do more--but still, the important thing is to do what you can, whenever you can.
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Will Schwalbe |
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dfadd94
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How great, I thought, to honor people while they are still alive.
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Will Schwalbe |
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4bb2ce0
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reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose -- electronic or printed or audio -- is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation.
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Will Schwalbe |
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0d73fab
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But mostly, when I look back, what I remember is not Mom rushing about; it's Mom sitting quietly in the center of the house, in the living room, under the swirling colors of a Paul Jenkins painting; there would be a fire in the fireplace and a throw over her lap, her hands sticking out to hold a book. And we all wanted to be there with her and Dad, reading quietly too.
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Will Schwalbe |
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75eb924
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I think it's because it shows that people--or hobbits, as the case may be--can find strength they didn't know they had.
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strength
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Will Schwalbe |
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8c44a93
|
It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made our of them.
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work
providence
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Will Schwalbe |
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92a94d9
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Also, how could anyone who loves books not love a book that is itself so in love with books?
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Will Schwalbe |
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e2769b8
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The day's passage was by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It read: That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?
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Will Schwalbe |
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54d5c5f
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She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done.
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emotions
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Will Schwalbe |
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b56b62d
|
Reading is a respite from the restlessness of technology, but it's not only that. It's how I reset and recharge. It's how I escape, but it's also how I engage. And reading should spur further engagement.
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Will Schwalbe |
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cc38536
|
This, I finally realized, was how Mom was able to focus when I was not. It was how she was able to be present with me, present with the people at a benefit or the hospital. She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what..
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Will Schwalbe |
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c511510
|
The truth is that people never realize their lives are about to change in unforeseen ways--that's just the nature of unforeseen ways.
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life
truth
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Will Schwalbe |
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ef295d2
|
I do think back,' Mom told me, 'on my wonderful headmistress at Brearly, the one who told us we could have everything we wanted.... And then, years later, I went back for a reunion, and I told the headmistress that I, indeed, managed to have it all--a husband, a career, three children--but that I was tired all the time, exhausted in fact. And she said, 'Oh, dear--did I forget to mention that you can, indeed, have it all, but you need a lot ..
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Will Schwalbe |
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c2fee60
|
As for me, I'm on a search and have been, I now realize, all my life - to find books to help me make sense of the world, to help me become a better person, to help me get my head around the big questions that I have and answer some of the small ones while I'm at it.
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Will Schwalbe |
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4004185
|
One of the things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or ..
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Will Schwalbe |
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f14cde5
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Were you sad to leave Cambridge?" I asked her. She was, she said. Very sad. But she was also looking forward to being back in New York. "The world is complicated," she added. "You don't have to have one emotion at a time."
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Will Schwalbe |
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2e7ecff
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But it's one thing to feel that a book can speak beyond its particular time and place to something universal, and another to ignore the circumstances and time in or about which it was written.
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Will Schwalbe |
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1ccc004
|
loneliness can kill people--in different ways can actually make you die. Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as 'big bursts' and 'little bursts.' Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows..
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Will Schwalbe |
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74c9d28
|
He's also able to accept death. He's not happy about it, but he's perfectly calm. When I stop all this treatment, it will be because it's time to stop.
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Will Schwalbe |
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5fcb5fa
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There's never a good excuse for not doing anything--
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Will Schwalbe |
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0cff661
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In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views--I just didn't think about religion."
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religion
god
believing-in-god
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Will Schwalbe |
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f8d8b53
|
Mom would often talk about a refugee boy she'd met in a hospital in Afghanistan. He was the victim of a land mine and had lost a leg. She said to him that she brought greetings to him from schoolchildren in New York. "Tell them not to worry about me," this little boy told her from his hospital bed. "I still have one leg."
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Will Schwalbe |
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6b68a46
|
When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter--they wanted books for their children. (quoting his mother)
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Will Schwalbe |
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dec78cc
|
That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves.
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Will Schwalbe |
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6b146b2
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That there's great joy in thanking.
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Will Schwalbe |
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0ea3bcc
|
Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves.
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Will Schwalbe |
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476fd32
|
We were terrified to stop, stop anything, and admit that something was wrong. Activity, frenzied activity, seemed to be the thing we all felt we needed. Only Dad slowed down, and that wasn't until he was trapped in a hospital getting intravenous antibiotics. Everything would be all right, everything would be possible, anything could be salvaged or averted, as long as we all kept running around.
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stop
terrified
running-away-from-problems
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Will Schwalbe |
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b4582d2
|
I realized then that for all of us part of the process of mom's dying was mourning, not just her death, but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don't really lose the person who has been.
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Will Schwalbe |
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56dbdeb
|
I particularly like that last phrase," Mom said. "About protecting your own happiness."
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Will Schwalbe |
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4ec5074
|
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally,
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Will Schwalbe |
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5b66553
|
I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that edu..
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stay-at-home-moms
working-moms
|
Will Schwalbe |
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499455d
|
The thing about Americans," she said, "is that you're very concerned about everything all the time."
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worry
|
Will Schwalbe |
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73bace0
|
His point: you don't have to travel the world to see the ways we mistreat one another; it's as close as the street outside our windows.
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Will Schwalbe |
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c8feed1
|
Why did I always need to do something, like referring one person to another, just for the sake of doing something, when sometimes, perhaps, it was better to do nothing?
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Will Schwalbe |
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76432ba
|
joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they've realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.
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Will Schwalbe |
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d0f3201
|
And reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it's a way of becoming more fully human and more humane.
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Will Schwalbe |
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e721f88
|
One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, what is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?"
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question
|
Will Schwalbe |