I was sitting in my parent's living room, trying to read "The Pleasures of Reading in the Age of Distraction." Ironically, I couldn't focus on it because I was too distracted. My parent's house felt like grand central station during rush hour. Every couple of minutes Tucker would come bouncing in, try to play with me for a minute and then go bouncing out to watch mom mop the floor, which apparently was much more exciting. My sister left, then came back, and then left again when her boyfriend arrived, which was after my brother got home and right before he left again. You could see why I was a little distracted. Once it quieted down a bit I started up again, and I came across this great quote:
"The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love--he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture or article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means--that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives; but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours our our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! Read at whim!"
May you find joy in reading at whim.
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