“A life-long reader, now middle-aged and finding myself unresolved about some of life’s biggest questions, I’m returning to some of the biggest texts I’ve ever read.
Can they help With the philosophical and psychological tensions that Still Trouble Me?”
Introduction
Whenever I have become particularly confused in my life, I return to the most influential words that have been written about the tension I am experiencing.
I do this not because I hold these words to be entirely correct (they are often wrong about so many things), but because they do not add insult to injury by rushing past my irresolution, suggesting instead that tensions cannot be resolved simply through more willpower or seeing things the right way, they linger on every way in which I am pulled, every contour of every shadow of every doubt.
As a child, I read not only for pleasure — and there was much pleasure — but for instruction, pouring over issue after issue produced by the legendary Indian comic book house Amar Chitra Katha, trying to work out what the exploits of the gods Arjun and Krishna could hold by way of implications for my own life, clues as to how I should be and what I should do.
I was, alongside my brightness, my desire for everyone around me to be happy and to be liked by them, a very serious child.
Somehow I was on a quest, the idea being, I think, to read every text that reflects and shapes all the ways humans have approached life and to put them into some sort of order. An early attempt at codification came in middle school, when I created a timeline plotting the great books of the world, an effort limited by the state of my knowledge (the Bible was rather too quickly followed by Madeline L’Angle’s young adult sci-fi classic, A Wrinkle in Time) and the size of the 28 x 22 inch Bristol display board I had to work with.
At some point, perhaps after I had pursued the study of key texts more formally at university, my quest changed from trying to know it all to trying to arrive at some conclusions for myself about how best to live given the particular philosophical and psychological tensions I struggle with.
Perhaps the greatest source of pain in my life is that because I am emotional, I do not always think or act the way I want to (Feel v Think). I have to fight to do the right thing and often fail to suppress the urge to do the wrong thing (Virtue v Vice). I get a real kick out of the present moment, but worry a lot about the future (Today v Tomorrow). I like collecting and having things, but hate debt and being encumbered by stuff (More v Less).
These smaller struggles are underpinned by larger ones: Why do I continue to read and be moved by stories — philosophical, religious and other — that I know to be factually untrue (Story v Reality)? How much of myself can I really change (Fate v Agency)?
Then there are the struggles with others: Do the benefits outweigh the compromises I must make to be with others (Shared v Individual)? How do I reconcile the expanded possibilities of being female today with the age-old bodily realities of hormones and procreation (Male v Female)? When does pride in one’s culture become prejudice (East v West)?
And then there is the greatest tension of all — to live even though we start to die the minute we are born (Life v Death).
If I now find myself as muddled as ever in my 40s, still grappling with these tensions, I do not think it is because, as a favourite aunt once fretted, I read too much — it is being aware of these tensions, perhaps at a relatively young age, that has led me to read, not the other way around.
And though I have not been able to organize them into the greatest ever chronology of the written word of all humankind, my bookshelves have helped me to realize this —
Tensions cannot always be resolved, but they are livable.
No tension, if it is a proper tension, can ever be completely resolved because of its complexity. If these tensions show up again and again throughout human history across time and cultures, it is because they appear to be lines around which human existence is tautly wound, lines which run through everything, in so many different ways. Consumed individually, even the greatest words about tensions often fail to satisfy because they are too sure of their remedies; taken together, spanning the time and space of human experience, a poignant and unnerving mass of aspirations and wrong turns and horrors and restarts, they sustain me, an instant tonic for my own confusion and suffering.
No two individuals will be marked by the same tensions in life, but through the many meaningful conversations I have had with family, friends, mentors and colleagues, I have seen that many of us wrestle with such impasses, however particularly and personally we experience them.
And because my bookshelves have helped me live, I realize that my quest over the years has now become a mission, of which this project is a first step — to show you how they have helped me, in case it may be of help to you.
How I Read
Each of the texts I’ve included in this project has helped me live with a particular tension I experience, a selection I’ve arrived at rather organically. To better understand my choices, it may help you to know what, how and why I read.
Almost Anything. In this project, I talk about texts rather than books because I tend to think about words broadly, in the many formats they appear in. For me, there isn’t much difference between a poem and a popular song lyric (which is why Bob Dylan was recently award the Nobel prize for literature). I’m interested in both ‘high’ (critically acclaimed or academically valued) and ‘low’ (or popular) culture. And one indigenous myth or religious text has as much potential value to me as a reader as another (of course, if you are a believer, one may innately mean more to you than others, but that is a different matter).
Prioritizing Influence. In academic circles, particularly science, the number of times a paper is referenced by other writers denotes its influence, often tracked formally via database rankings. Approached informally, I find this concept to be more widely useful. Because I (now realize that I) can’t read all the texts in the world, I think about how influential a text has been in its sphere, whether in academic circles or common culture, to help me decide what to read next.
Getting Papercuts. It is personally hard for me to get past the incredible (the supernatural qualities of mythical and religious belief), the inane (the near universal way in which a woman’s capacity is underestimated throughout human history) and the reductionist (seeing any one factor like economic class or race as being the only explanation for every human phenomena), but I try to get past my instinctive irritation. The same instinct that would have had me put down the Bible at times would have had me put down Karl Marx and I would have missed too much.
To redress the prejudice that has stupidly negated the value of a text because it is written by a woman or someone from a different racial, sexual or other background, I read more. And while some texts, even the ‘great books’, say silly and stupid and downright dangerous things, the truth is that we humans have a tendency to be silly and stupid and downright dangerous too — and reading helps me see exactly how.
As Self-Help. While some are quick to dismiss the top-selling genre of ‘self-help’, that is, books which tell readers how to solve particular problems (from today’s Talking to Strangers to yesterday’s How to Win Friends and Influence People), studies have shown that the ‘bibliotherapy’ of some self-help books can be as effective as a visit to a therapist. In truth, I tend to take in everything I read, from religious texts to novels, as a potential source of self-help; in my times of need, the right words have often come to my mind at the right time, sometimes years after I’ve read them.
Towards My Own Conclusions. In my library at home, I have a bookshelf reserved for my personal canon. It includes the texts that have helped me arrive at a conclusion for myself that I often need to be reminded of — because life has a way of making you question yourself. It also includes the texts that remind me of conclusions that I have dismissed after careful consideration, something I also need to be reminded of — particularly if such conclusions are widely held in society.
In both cases, I never arrive at a conclusion that completely accepts or rejects the premise of a text, most often either because it offers only partial resolution of the tensions I experience or says something completely objectionable along the way; I find the exercise of engaging more actively with the text to arrive at my own, modified and always being modified, working conclusions to be most useful to me.
The essays in this project are my attempt to share with you how this happens for me.
About the Writer
The idea of assembling a personal canon — a set of texts that serve me over a lifetime — along with my own set of conclusions about them is something I aspire to and believe in.
Any biases and errors of reading, experience or understanding are my own; mine is of course only one of many viewpoints.
Even though I’ve since moved on from many inherited ideas, my views are no doubt shaped by, along with my own particular biology and life experiences, these biographical facts of my life: I am a biological female, born in the West, specifically, Scarborough, Toronto, Canada, to parents of Eastern descent, specifically Indian Gujarati Hindu (and even more specifically, Anavil Brahmin) and have one sister and one brother. I am married to a biological man born in the same place, to parents of Western descent, specifically Greek (and even more specifically, Greek Orthodox Christian); we live in downtown Toronto and have no children.
I hold a Honours Bachelors degree in Political Science and English Literature (Trinity College, the University of Toronto) and a Masters of Arts degree in International Affairs (Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) and have completed periods of study and work in Sydney, Australia, Sao Paulo, Brazil and New Delhi, India. I have made my living as an analyst in government and an editor and marketer in private enterprise.
I hope that my passion for this project serves you in some way.
Thank you for reading.
Urmi
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