It all started with a stroll down the road toward a destination I have no recollection of any longer. I saw a call for discussion, “What is the single book that inspired you?”, but no single book inspired me. I left the discussion alone, challenging my partner to rather uptake it. But we got busy, and soon I completely forgot about it. Then that afternoon, strolling mindlessly, I remembered the deadline.
I wrote something about the two most important books in my life. These two books could alternatively be read as two important moments in my life. Books, after these moments, solidified their life-altering influence on my very way of being.
My phone buzzed with a notification. Like so many other times, I briefly looked at it, pushed it aside, and went along with what I was doing. But then I thought about what I just saw. This was the moment when @creativemary blessed me with a special gift. The moment when I saw what it was, my heart began beating faster and I could not immediately fathom what just happened. In the bigger scheme of things, the gesture only symbolises a very small thing, like the flower on the side of the road. But when you start to think about it, think about the gesture, think about the flower on the side of the road, a world unfolds for you in which the first thing that comes to mind is the tremendous flood of emotion.
Small gestures contain a world. Few in our day and age care. In fact, they care very much, but this care does not always stretch beyond the care for their own ego. Truly caring demands a strange vulnerability in which you place yourself on the battlefield for the other. This vulnerability might lead to nothing, and again in the greater scheme of things might not give you the carer a lot back. But this very act of caring, transcending the care for the ego or for the self, becomes the most beautiful flower. Few might actually see the flower, not even to speak about appreciating it. But those who see this flower, those who experience the care of others, internally know the magnitude and the weight of the gesture, the act, the care.
I knew what I wanted to do with the gift. There was in fact, in my mind, only one right thing to do with it.
My life consists of books. I study full-time, I read every single day, I write, I live my research, and I create. To create necessitates fuel. The creative act requires vast amounts of fuel. I consume like a sponge which was left out in the sun. And I never get soaked. I am a born seeker, a journeyman through the vast network of ideas, stories, sadness, existential contemplations, understandings, knowledge, wisdom, and the horror of two-am-in-the-morning-thoughts. I would not have met my better half without books and writing, I would not have pursued philosophy if it was not for books and writing, I would not have lived if it was not for books and writing.
After giving so many gifts to others, my girlfriend and I did not have anything left for ourselves. The stereotypical image of a couple that runs after everything else forgetting about themselves might come to mind. Nothing so drastic in nature, but we did not think about our own, let us say, “happiness”. (Such a loaded term.) Our mutual connection of books has been good but detrimental to our bank accounts. Books have become commodified. The internal worth does not always represent what they are sold for. This goes both ways, either too little or too much. Physical books are different to e-books in so many ways. I read books by continually smelling the pages, and feeling the texture of the book, I cannot read e-books. Something is missing in the reading experience. But physical copies are expensive.
And then the gift was given to us. And the gift blessed us with a late Christmas gift. It rained for a moment, not in water but in books. We were showered with the presence of so many new characters, stories, horrors, existential crises, and life-altering pages. We book lovers live through our books.
Small gifts carry within them a world. The flower on the side of the road blooms because of the initial moment of care. And all that one can say is Thank you, even though this show of gratitude does not come close to the gravity of the initial gift.
The only concrete way to say thank you, is by continually creating the story so that it never dies on the side of the road without blessing someone else with it.
The writings in this post are my own. The photographs used are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.