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[from Saturday night / early, early Sunday morning]
I have finished Gone with the Wind. It is 1 in the morning.
At 11:30, my mom came in the room, a knowing smile on her face.
“How’s the book going?”
A silly grin was my only response.
“Are you going to stay up to finish it?” she asked.
A guilty grin and a nod.
She chuckled and pointedly glanced at the clock.
“I know,” I said, but maintained my plan.
The title is essentially my response to the tale. The first 400 pages seemed to be building action for the delight of the last 200. Not to say the first 400 weren’t delightful (because they were). But in the last two hundred pages, we see the transformation of the characters, tragedy and anguish, love and passion (and love of every sort: between husband and wife, brother and sister, friend to friend).
I feel so achingly empathetic, and yet completely satisfied in the ending of the book. (If you plan on reading it, don’t you dare cheat by starting there! 
). It is simply delightful.
I’m writing this at 1am, but I am going to wait until Sunday afternoon to post it, because I am going to enjoy that still feeling that comes after finishing a truly satisfying book. So Sunday afternoon, I will post this and ask for what I mentioned in my last post. Any suggestions that you have been harbouring as to what book I should add to my reading list I will now gratefully accept! I’m hoping for classics, but if you have any suggestions from any other genre/era, I just might start another list. The only other condition is that it must be a book that you have loved, and (or) it must be one that has impacted you deeply.
Thanks for your recommendations! I look forward to growing my reading list 
Yes, admittedly, the summer is half-over (for those of you operating under the three-term University system), but for those operating by the public school system, the summer is just beginning! Besides, I am getting close to starting book number two, meaning I’ll need to add book number four to my list.
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
I have about ~200 pages left, which actually is getting close, believe it or not—the book is ~850 pages long. When that happens and I begin reading Dumas’ killer Monte Cristo, I will be looking for another book to add to my list. Please, no suggestions just yet. I feel the addition of another title would be simply too much, even for an avid reader such as myself. They are all monstrously long books. But keep in mind the next classic you think I should dig into. I will announce when I am finished Gone with the Wind (I won’t be able to help it; I’ll be so excited), and you can make suggestions then.
I began reading Gone with the Wind when I was probably ten or eleven years old. I was a very ambitious child, choosing it off the shelf primarily because it was so thick. I’d probably heard adults talking about it at one time, because the title was familiar, and despite any doubts in my ability to finish it, I staunchly maintained that I wanted to read it.
Well, big surprise, I did not finish it. I probably made it about 300 pages in, surprisingly enough, but I know that I didn’t actually process most of it. It is a delightful book because it meanders so. It begins by stating it is a story about Scarlett O’Hara, but as it continues, the plot will pause and tell other people’s stories as well. It told the story of Scarlett’s mother and father, how they came to be in Georgia and how they came to be married to one another. It also meanders to philosophize about the happenings in the book, sometimes taking Scarlett’s perspective, sometimes departing entirely from its heroine and her story. As a child, I must have skipped these parts or read without comprehending, because I don’t remember them at all. But I did remember the plot as I was reading. I also remember trusting Scarlett too much as I read. I remember not liking Melanie much at all, and thinking Ashley felt nothing for Scarlett, mostly because Scarlett said she did not like Melanie, and because, despite Scarlett’s obvious feelings for Ashley, he chose to marry someone else. But as an adult reading it, I can detect the nuances of character that Mitchell put in this story, and the meanderings were some of my favourite parts. I would come to the end of one, be pulled back into Scarlett’s story and be surprised as I was reminded that she was the character I was reading about, not the person the text meandered to. In my first reading, I was Scarlett, resolving whatever dissonance I experienced when her actions or thoughts were completely different from what my own would be by ignoring them, and promptly forgetting about them once the narrative moved past them. Now, I am fully aware of what I don’t like about Scarlett, of what I disagree with and of what I would do differently. But even still, I am held to the narrative, wanting to know what happens next and really hoping that things work out in the end for her, despite her selfishness. Instead of experiencing the tale, I am watching it. And thoroughly enjoying it.
What separates the good from the great is discipline.
I was watching this video (yes, I’m a little enamoured of TED talks right now…). I used to play the violin. My teacher complimented my ear and my tone. I was able to produce a clear tone in a very short period of time, and, since there are no markings on the violin separating the different tones from each other, it is very important that the musician develops a good ear to know when they have and have not placed their fingers in the correct position. I watch this video of a child who is half my age, and I wonder, if I had continued with the violin, could I ever have achieved this kind of mastery? My first impulse was to make a throwaway, yes, of course. Strange first impulse… but my reason for making it was that I understand the hours and hours of practice that must be behind her playing, the years of dedication to her instrument (7 years), and let’s not forget the support and probably the assisted discipline, shall we call it (ie, “It’s time to practice!”), from her parents. I had the ear and the ability to achieve good tone from the instrument, but I lacked the passion for violin playing. I love listening to the violin (especially live), but playing the instrument does not stir my soul. I also lacked the discipline for the hours of practice that would have been required each week, and the fortitude to stick with it for years and years. And that is the difference. I was good, or could have been good, but what this eleven-year-old has that I did not is passion and discipline.
And I think that’s a lesson to take with us. For anything we want to achieve or become skilled at, it requires discipline. For an instrument, we can’t play cavalierly an hour a week and expect to improve. I casually play the piano. It was mostly during the school year, and mostly to take a break from studying and to relieve stress. Since the summer began nearly two months ago, I haven’t touched the instrument. Even when I did play regularly, I probably played less than five hours a week, and I was not enrolled in lessons. I did not expect to become a master at the instrument, and would not consider myself good enough to play in front of others. There were two pieces that I learned at separate times, pieces that I spent hours and hours practicing over the course of several weeks, and these pieces I played in our residence coffeehouses, but I wouldn’t ever sit down in front of the instrument and expect to dazzle an audience. But should I choose to improve, should I decide that I wanted to develop my playing, I would invest in lessons, I would actually play above 1-3 times a week, I would devote my time, energy, thoughts, etc. to the instrument.
And that, my friends, is discipline, and that is what we need to develop to achieve mastery. This is when you hear talk of people waking at 5am for early morning practices or spending every spare moment they have engulfed in their subject of choice. I have several friends who do this, and I honour their discipline and their knowledge and skills that have developed out of it. I also envy it . I acknowledge the importance of maintaining balance, and also of being aware if it is starts to become a burden, but discipline in anything we do is something that is important.
Discipline is the difference between good and great, between one who browses among the daisies and one who digs down to investigate the roots. One acknowledges the beauty of the flower, the other truly understands how it works. Actually, that isn’t a bad metaphor, because it also emphasizes the importance of balance. If you spend too much time engulfed in learning the mechanisms, you forget the beauty that made you want to explore it in the first place. And your enjoyment of the beauty is enhanced by understanding the internal beauty as well as what is on the surface.
And that, I guess, is a challenge for all of us, to examine our lives and to improve our self-discipline and our balance.
Brilliant.
He is the author of the book The Art of Possibility. A very good speaker, and has lots of wonderful and inspiring thoughts to share.
I read a quote once that said (basically), “To become an expert in any field is to become intimately acquainted with its dark side”. I’m going to suggest that there probably isn’t much of a “dark side” to teaching in an elementary school, but it does have its own problems and difficulties. But I think you’ve found the place you are supposed to be when discovering the “dark side”, whatever that may be, doesn’t turn you away. If it makes you want to find a way to change things for the better, if it inspires you to make a positive change, then perhaps you are in the right place.
I was speaking with a friend of mine the other night about the topic of personal responsibility. Specifically, we were talking about how North American society seems to have decided to give up on personal responsibility. No where am I presented with more blatant proof than on the schoolyard.
Incidents happen on fairly regular basis at a school. By “incident”, I mean arguments between children, name-calling, pushing, hitting, exclusion, gaining up on each other, yelling at each other, etc. During any given lunch monitor duty, I have at least one, but usually several more, such incidents to deal with. Children come to me complaining that so-and-so called them a name, hit them, pushed them, won’t play with them, won’t stop following them, won’t leave them alone, has stopped talking to them and on it goes. In those scenarios, I can usually tell pretty quickly who is the instigator and who is the victim. I can also usually tell when it is a case of a fall-out between friends and when it is a matter of “enemies” (as great as enemies can be in elementary school) getting into each others’ space. But it doesn’t matter what the incident is, and it doesn’t matter what kind of clash it is, for uniformly, when I am being told what happened, it is always the other person’s fault.
“But he said you hit him. Is that true?” I ask.
“Well, but he was calling me a name!” Bobby will say.
“That’s because you wouldn’t stop following me!” Bobby’s former friend, Teddy, will say.
“You didn’t have to call me that name!” Bobby will protest.
“And then he hit me,” Teddy repeats, trying again to tell me what happened. “And it wasn’t fair, because I didn’t do anything to him.”
“He called me a name!” Bobby will add. “And all I was doing was trying to play with him, because he said he would play with me this recess!”
“I didn’t want to play this recess!” Teddy will say. “Tell him to stop following me!”
“Tell him to stop calling me names!”
I usually try to cut through the argument before this point is reached.
“Guys!” I say. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s really simple. Bobby, I don’t want to hear again that you were hitting someone–”
Bobby will try to protest.
“And Teddy,” I will interrupt before Bobby has a chance to speak. “Don’t call him names.”
Teddy will usually mumble something like an agreement.
“I need you guys to give each other space this recess. Don’t go near each other–”
Protests usually erupt at this point.
“He was the one coming near me!” Teddy will cry, at the same time that Bobby says, “If he hadn’t [some obscure and heretofore unmentioned offense here], I wouldn’t have had to!”
“Guys, seriously,” I say. “Just give each other space. You don’t go near Teddy, and Teddy, you don’t go near Bobby. I don’t want to hear anything more about anyone hitting someone or calling someone names. Understood?”
By this point, usually there is some level of begrudged agreement.
I’m sure that you’ve caught this, but not once did either child admit that they had done something. They didn’t deny having done it, but they never admitted it, and the implication in their words was that they never would have done it, if the other person hadn’t done something first. There is no indication that they accept that what they have done is wrong, and no indication that they realize they can control their own actions, or, regardless of what the other person does to them, that they can avoid escalating the situation simply by choosing to do what is right.
Oh, do kids ever have a handle on justice and fairness. Oh, do they ever. But it is always justice for themselves and fairness in their own lives.
I have accepted that this is normal for kids. In psychology, there is whole stage of development devoted to the time when children finally learn to think about things from another’s perspective. Rather than automatically assuming that the way they think is the way everyone else thinks, children begin learning that people see things from very different perspectives, but until they have a very firm grasp on this (and even sometimes long after this point is reached), they still think about things primarily as how they apply to themselves. And that’s fair. But our job as adults is to teach them how to consider other people. Our job as adults is to teach them how to take responsibility for their own actions. Our job as adults is to teach them how to make good choices.
We need to get there. We need to be teaching our kids this. Imagine what our society will look like when no one is willing to stand up and take responsibility for what they’ve done. Instead of having only the occasional person refuse to admit when they’re wrong, or refusing to apologize, or blaming everyone and everything else for what has happened, it would be everywhere. Oh I shudder to think of the chaos that would be.
What do you think about all of this?
Equal does not mean same.
I think we have a very hard time with this concept in our society, especially when it comes to gender differences. I think that when we say men and women are equal, we have to be very careful to not therefore conclude that men and women are the same. Men and women are quite different, from our physical make-up, to our thinking patterns, but that is not to say that men are better than women, nor the reverse, that women are better than men.
To bring the topic on to more general terms (eradicating the idea of gender differences, which is a very sensitive topic today), we can look for example, at a person’s intelligence. Nay, let’s not even look at something as personal as that. Let us look at height. I am a short person. As such, it is absolutely impossible for me to reach the top shelf in our kitchen. This does not, however, indicate that I am less valuable as a human being. I am different from my brother and my dad, from most of the guys I’m friends with, and from many of the girls I am friends with. As such, I need to turn to the taller people in my acquaintance to assist me in reaching that shelf. Am I still a valued member of the family? Yes. Is my company still appreciated by my friends? I hope the answer is yes . Does my lack of height in anyway make me less important to those who love me most? No.
Let’s move on to a person’s intelligence.
Again, in our society, we like to think of everyone as the same, but the reality is, we aren’t the same, and of this I am given daily proof at the school I work in. There are some kids who are just quick as whips when it comes to their schoolwork. They finish quickly and correctly their schoolwork, they process information accurately and with speed, and they are eager to keep learning and to keep working. There are other children who are equally as smart, but less motivated, meaning they know how to do the work, but don’t have the same desire to apply themselves. There are also children who are just not on the same level intellectually. They have difficulty reading and processing information, and even when the question is read to them, even when hints are given, even if the answer is plainly stated, they still struggle to grasp it and to connect the answer with the question.
Now, here is the important question. Do you suppose the child with lesser intelligence is loved any less by his or her parents than the quick-as-a-whip child? No. The answer could not be anything but “no”. Let us transmute the question a little bit. Do you suppose that God loves the child with lesser intelligence any less than the child with greater intelligence? No. Do you think He values both children exactly the same? Yes. Both children are equally precious in His sight, but they are different from each other.
Difference has no bearing on a person’s value.
Now, we can try to apply this to gender differences. The only problem is, it is very difficult to define gender based on what someone does. There really is no such thing as a woman’s career or a man’s career, a woman’s job around the house or a man’s job around the house. You can’t even whittle it down to typical behaviour. Typically, a woman emotes more, and is more concerned about touching base/being on the same page relationally. But that’s about all I’ve got.
The differences between a man and a woman are no longer about what we do, but are about who we are. What we do as men and women, while we may occupy the same roles, and while we may do the same things, will still look quite different from one another, because of the essence of who we are. The important thing is to go after the areas where we are most gifted, and to pursue the topics that interest us most, and to seek to grow internally as a person, and to apply that growth to what we do. Our expression of our roles will naturally be different, because men and women are naturally different. But that does not stretch so far as to say that men are more valuable than women or that women are more valuable than men.
I have satisfied this debate of gender differences within myself, and that is perhaps why I am more careless when I speak of gender roles, for example, in the post below (A debate continued). But I do believe that men and women are different, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I think it is much better that way. Eradicating gender again, as humans, we all have different things to offer, whether it is intelligence, compassion, problem-solving, wisdom through experience, interpersonal, anything, really. Where we are weak, others are strong, and I think the same is true in male/female relationships. I am not saying that women are all weak in one area and men are strong, therefore it is good for them to be together. I am just echoing what was said in the beginning. “It is not good for man to be alone,” and “two shall become one.” The importance is not in being strong according to society’s definition of masculinity or femininity (the “typical”). It is in being strong as a female and as you are gifted, and being strong as a male and as you are gifted. And then praying that you will find a mate who will compliment your strengths and weaknesses, regardless of what they are.
We ought to embrace and celebrate our differences as men and women, not seek to eradicate them. Yes, the differences were abused in the past, in the same way differences of race were abused. But we shouldn’t start pretending that race does not exist. That is absurd. It does exist, and we are different because of it. And even if race didn’t exist, we would still be different because of how we were raised. Different life experiences mean we are different people. And what have our life experiences taught us that we can offer to other people?
Why do we struggle to allow that we are different from others?
Why do we have difficulty saying the words, “I disagree with you”?
Why did I struggle with writing this post, double- and triple-checking my words for fear I would receive backlash from people accusing me of being racist or sexist or elitist?
Difference is not bad. Just because we are different from someone else doesn’t mean we are automatically at odds with them. And just because we accept our differences doesn’t mean that we then must agree with someone who thinks differently from ourselves.
Difference is not bad. Difference with critical thinking, and a secure hold on Truth, and a desire to learn, and grow, and be shaped by our experiences is not bad. It is good to have differences.
Equal means “of the same value”; it does not mean “the same”.
A friend and I were having a debate a couple of weekends ago. It is only now that I feel I can articulate more clearly the point I was trying to make, and since the debate occurred in the presence of most of our friends, I feel no qualms about raising it again in this public forum (However, if he would rather I not, then read quickly, folks, for the post will be down as soon as he says the word).
The debate was about engagement rings. Two couples in our group of friends are engaged to be married, both at the end of the summer, so naturally, the topic of engagement and marriage have been coming up more frequently. I was speaking with another girl about the topic of rings and discussing our preferences (both of us are single, but again, the topic almost can’t help but come up ), and in the course of the conversation, another friend spoke up.
“Well, what if the guy doesn’t have a ring?” he asked.
I turned to my female friend, T–, and teased, “He’d better get one soon!” T– and I both laughed, but my male friend pushed a little bit.
“So are you saying you wouldn’t get engaged to a guy, just because he doesn’t have a ring?
I began defending myself, saying that the ring was a symbol of his commitment, and in a sense an “investment” in the relationship, and shows that he is serious and willing and able to back it up financially.
“So that’s what’s important?” my friend asked, teasing. “The money?”
By that point, I was so concerned with defending myself that I lost track of my line of reasoning. But now, a couple of weeks later, here it is.
When a guy asks a girl to marry him, he isn’t just asking her to spend the rest of her life with him (a huge ask to begin with), he is asking for her heart. The thing is, a woman’s heart is a very valuable and powerful part of who she is. The heart is the centre of the being, and it is from the heart that speech, life, love, etc. spring out of. It is also incredibly powerful. It often takes a woman a long time to fall in love with someone (I am generalizing, and I also don’t mean crush-y, lovey-dovey feelings. I mean actual love, the love that sacrifices self for the sake of the other), but when she does, it is complete and exclusive to that man alone. And a woman’s love is a powerful driving force behind their man. If the woman believes he can do something, the man will be unstoppable. (Do clothe this romanticism in reality in order for it to ring completely true). And that is often all the man needs in order to make it through a tough day, or survive trials: the knowledge that his woman is somewhere waiting for him, trusting him, believing in him.
When a man is asking for a woman to marry him, he is asking for her undivided love, undivided belief, undivided trust. He is asking her to walk with him for the rest of his life, to be joyful with him, to cry with him, to worship with him, to work alongside him, to treasure him, to honour him, to respect him, to love him, to be patient with him (when he is struggling), to forgive him (when he fails), to build him up (to his face and to others, whether he can or cannot hear her)… and much more.
He is asking her to do all of this and to open her heart to him and make it over to him alone, and he, in turn, is promising to protect her heart and return all of what he is asking for in his request. I think, considering the commitment he is asking of her, and considering the promise and commitment he is making for her, all of it, for the rest of both of their lives, I think it only makes sense that this commitment is marked with a symbol, which is, in our society, an engagement ring.
Feel free to continue the debate.
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