Another Day in the Country
Live and learn
© Another Day in the Country
Learning something new at every stage of your life is such an interesting phenomenon.
For 80 years, I’d never heard of Albert Camus. One very cold winter day, I heard a quote from him, and I was hooked. I might even have quoted him in this column before, but it’s worth repeating.
“In the depths of winter,” Camus said, “I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.”
I loved that thought!
Immediately I wanted to know more about the man who wrote it.
My infatuation was partly brought about by the drifts of unmelting snow blanketing my town. I needed to be reminded of my own courage and contentedly wait for spring.
”Blessed are the hearts that bend; they shall never be broken,” was something else Camus wrote, reminding the reader to be flexible and move with the times.
He also declared, “Life is the sum of our choices.”
I felt as if I’d found a soul mate.
He contended that living in an absurd world does not give us freedom to do whatever we choose.
Take murder, for instance. Life always comes with limits and responsibilities through which we can create meaning in our existence.
That means, in my translation of those ideas, that the crazier, more absurd the world becomes, the more responsibility we adults hold in our hands — especially now, where every news blurb I hear is more outlandish and actions of people in power far worse than comedians’ replays of current events.
“Did that really happen?” I ask my sister as we watch an opening skit on “Saturday Night Live.”
She nods in affirmation, and I shake my head in bewilderment.
My new acquaintance, Albert Camus, believed that “happiness is not an accidental gift but a conscious act.”
I like that idea. In fact, I’ve long put that notion into practice, and it’s served me well.
I’m working very hard to stay optimistic and positive these days.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally was able to go back to the library and check out an armful of new books.
All the books I earlier checked out had gone back into circulation while I traveled over the holidays. Then, we got snowed in, and getting books from the library was at the bottom of my to-do list.
When I finally darkened the library door, it had been more than two months since I’d last visited. Shelves containing new books had been replenished. I was like a kid in a candy store.
Would I pick mysteries, history, biography, or self-help? More than I realized, I had been missing that handy stack of books beside my bed.
A couple of summers ago, my grandson was reading the “Dune” series by Frank Herbert.
“I’ll read them with you,” I volunteered, not knowing what I was getting into — another world.
I soldiered on because I wanted to be able to discuss the books with him, stretch my horizons, and have something in common with this teenage boy.
When those books were made into films, I watched the first “Dune” movie with him.
Then, the second of the series came out, and I was on my own. At Christmas he asked, “Baba, did you ever watch that second ‘Dune’ movie?”
I had to admit that I started and stopped.
“It’s too violent,” I explained, “when someone else controls what you see.”
I couldn’t take it. Reading the book, I could imagine a scene in my mind and control the amount of destruction. Watching a movie, you are in the filmmaker’s hands.
Last week, I started to read one of my current selections from the library and thought this was a book my grandson would be interested in reading.
It’s a story of someone leaving home to go to college, which this teenager is going to be doing in a few months.
I stopped reading after the first few pages and ordered the book to be sent to him in California.
Then I called with an offer.
“I’m sending you a book,” I said. “I have a copy, too. How about reading it with me?”
My sister and I do a variety of things to keep in touch between California and Kansas, including playing games like “Jokers and Pegs” on Facetime with my kids.
Why not reading the same book and talking about it, like a family book club?
On Saturday, during our weekly game with Dagfinnr’s mother making up the fourth player, he said, “Oh, Baba, I got the book and read the first chapter. I like it.”
So here we are, my grandson and I, two thousand miles and two generations apart, hunting for common ground.
I know how much you can learn from a good book, and we need something positive to talk about, something to share, on another day in the country.