DOWN(SIZING) TO THE ESSENTIALS
/“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
My first thoughts: 1. Wow, that puts a lot of pressure on books. 2. Is Oscar saying we are what we read or at the very least we become what we read? 3. Do we really reach a place where we are what we are and we can’t help it?
Maybe I shouldn’t assume that he’s speaking only of books. He may be also referring to news sources, social media, electronic media, etc. I’m guessing his conclusion would stand.
We’ll be “down-sizing” soon, dispensing with a bunch of our worldly treasures. (I hope and pray that doesn’t mean a giant garage sale. I hate garage sales. So, if we have something you want let me know and I'll put your name on it and you can pick it up when we're ready.) We’ll keep a few things to set up a little household, but that’s for after living the silvery, nomadic dream: a year or two year's long cross-country adventure in our Airstream.
In preparation, I’ve been making a list of things I’ll want to keep. So far, other than the essentials for the journey, I want to keep my drum set. I would also like to keep my stereo and vinyl record collection—some new and some I’ve been hauling around since the 60s—but that may not be practical.
I will also keep some books. I’ve already given away a bunch and there will be more to give. I have a list I’ve been compiling of what is in the essential library. Here are a few (in no certain order) along with a quote from each:
“The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” - Atticus Finch
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
So, that’s a sampling of what I’m keeping for my library. These make the cut because I’ve read all of them multiple times and I look forward to reading them again. They always seem to have something more to give.
Also, from Oscar Wilde:
“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
I’m stretching Oscar’s definition to books, and these books provide great company within solitude. And, if these particular books help shape the person I will become when I can no longer help it; I’m okay with that.