The parable of the tortoise and hare is eternal. The simple story illuminates the pitfalls of laziness and hubris. It also suggests there can be important perspective shifts when we ask, “How fast should I be going?” and, “Am I going in the right direction?”

Today we live in a society structured to promote early bloomers. Our school system has sorted people by the time they are 18, using grades and SAT scores. Some of these people zoom to prestigious academic launching pads while others get left behind. Many of our most prominent models of success made it big while young—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan. Magazines publish lists with headlines like “30 Under 30” to glamorize youthful superstars on the rise. […] But for many people, the talents that bloom later in life are more consequential than the ones that bloom early.

~ David Brooks, from You Might Be a Late Bloomer

Go faster. Slow down. Work harder. Work smarter. Focus here. Avoid there. Zoom in. Zoom out.

I think we often get distracted by, well, life, or social media, or whatever. At the end of the day, we can see that we haven’t really moved the needle on what we truly care about. Women out there in particular know this is true. How do you keep the main thing the main thing?

~ Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

There’s magic in the perspective. Shifting any parameter will always have a dramatic affect on how we perceive what is happening.

Did you hear the one about the tree sloth mugged by a tortoise? When asked could he describe his attacker, the sloth replied, “No, it all happened so fast!”

I finally regained traction by reading it aloud. I finished the whole book this way, which made it an unfettered joy. Because each of its complex Victorian sentences had to pass through my mouth, I found it easy to stay with their meaning and structure. The reading was slower, but much smoother, with very little doubling back. It felt like I was finally driving in the appropriate gear for the terrain.

~ David Cain, from In Favor of Reading Aloud

Reading aloud well is wickedly difficult. Adding oration seems an unnecessary complication. Without the oration, it’s easy to apprehend the meanings of the individual words and short phrases, while also failing to assemble the larger meanings of the sentences and beyond.

Practicing reading aloud forces you to practice at multiple levels simultaneously: starting with all the nuances of physiology, up through the meaning carried in pronunciation and tone, all the way up to possibly changing another’s mind.

Reading is letting someone else model the world for you. This is an act of intimacy. When the author is morose, you become morose. When he is mirthful, eventually you may share it. And after finishing a very good book one is driven a little mad, forced to return from a world that no one nearby has witnessed.

~ Simon Sarris

I find that how much I can read depends on more than just available time. Recent sleep, worldly stress, my physical and mental status, mood, and even what food I’ve recently eaten, all end up deciding—when arriving at some bit of free time—whether I’m able to read well. Woe to me the times I decide to just forge ahead because, “I should read more.” Conversely, when the figurative stars align in my life, and book is good, I can nom-nom-nom hundreds of pages and feel better for it.

The device is especially effective in comedy because, as Newhart knew on some level, we all like to feel smart. By putting us in the position of filling in the blanks in the conversation, Newhart gives us the opportunity to feel a little extra satisfaction and to create some of the humor ourselves by crafting our own sense of the rube on the other side of the conversation.

~ Mark Canada, from Bob Newhart was more than an actor or comedian – he was a literary master

“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” is the archetype of a story where the readers fill in the details. We are all, always, doing some filling-in as we read. That’s the magic enabling the author’s thoughts to cross time and space to become our thoughts.

Continual awareness of all time and space, of the size and life span of the things around us. A grape seed in infinite space. A half twist of a corkscrew against eternity.

~ Marcus Aurelius

I don’t open many wine bottles these days. But when I do, I always think of that Aurelius quote.

Yes, even if it’s a screw-top bottle. Yes, even if it has a cork and someone hands me one of those dumb-ass, two-curved-tongs style openers. And, in such cases, in addition to Aurelius’s reminder, I’m also thinking: If we’re going to ingest poison, we could at least nod towards meaning-making ritual and use a proper corkscrew.

Wonder, as I describe it here, is more than the sort of curiosity that motivates someone to seek a simple factual answer (eg, ‘What is the biggest kind of dog?’) Wonder moves someone to seek out explanations – especially about the patterns of cause and effect that underlie phenomena. It is also different from awe, which can occur as a more passive state of amazement. Wonder involves active thought and engagement. It invokes conjectures about ‘how’ and ‘why’. It might even launch speculations about different possible worlds. Wonder motivates targeted explorations and discoveries.

~ Frank Keil, from How to revive your sense of won

All of which leaves me wondering…

Perhaps those of us who have kept in touch with that sense of child-like wonder are doing something clear and simple: Remaining curious about perspectives and continuously poking at shifting them.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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