I love books. And most likely, if a search engine brought you here, you do too. I thought about what it would be like if a book wanted that same love back and came up with this bibliophile cartoon.
Some amazing things happen when bibliophiles unite.
Tag: reading
Categories
Seeking the Lofty
A quote by Thorton Wilder reminds me how we need to be involved in seeking the lofty and watch our mental diet as much as our physical one.
“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.”
Thornton Wilder Quotes. BrainyQuote.com, BrainyMedia Inc, 2022. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thornton_wilder_122026, accessed January 4, 2022.
Thornton Wilder
Garbage in, garbage out is a cliche not just for computer programmers but for people as well. Do we consider how the media we consume affects us? Could we do better by intentionally consuming material that will lift us up as well as others? In other words, is what we’re taking in edifying?
I will confess that I have to watch this all the time. Like everyone else, I am prone to take the bait of breaking news that is really more broken than breaking. I can be drawn to clickbait about a football player with a bad attitude or an outrageous politician that said something offensive.
We all have choices. None of us need to be led along by sensational headlines that only give us mental junk food. The Internet can give us just as much good material as the bad. We just have to be more intentional and look for it. Let’s look for the lofty today.
The other day, a coworker was asking me how I keep my notes organized. I responded that I have got a lot out of a web site and book about the Bullet Journal Method.
It reminded me of how valuable it is to reinforce a lesson by telling or teaching someone the same lesson. I have been using a variation of the method for some time and bought the book in the spring. I was reminded of how effective the method was when I told him how it helped me.
If you are a lifelong learner, I suggest you find a way to teach what you’ve learned to others. You don’t have to be an official, formal teacher. You can just share what you’ve learned to your friends or people at work.
If you have found a piece of knowledge to be useful for you, chances are another person can benefit from it. In turn, that helps you remember the lesson and reinforce it in your own mind.
I have been taking a leadership class. Last night, I, along with two of my classmates presented the first half of the book Tuesdays With Morrie. I drew a mind map of the first five Tuesdays Mitch Albom discussed with Morrie Schwartz.
The mind map goes over the first five topics Morrie and Mitch discuss:
- The world
- Feeling sorry for yourself
- Regrets
- Death
- Family
These are topics you don’t normally talk about at work. But I found through the discussion that leadership is more than getting things done and motivating the office. We bring our whole selves to work and what we think and feel about important topics affects everything we do.
So here’s the question we gave the class: If you knew you were dying, what would you tell a loved one or a coworker about one of these topics?
What would you say?
What can I say? Pictures make a book more interesting. And I bet you agree with me too. It’s sad that society reasons you must have nothing but text on a page. Don’t get me wrong. Book design is an art unto itself and takes a lot of work to make it look perfect. But still, books without pictures have always looked boring and inaccessible.