quote:

I noticed that a lot of how I understand the world comes quite directly from the books I read (no way, that was unexpected...). I mean, I have... feelings and intuitions, and then I read a book that organizes that, shapes it, reinforces it, makes it into something meaningful. For example, my main/initial “worldview” is a mixture of Racine (we are aaaaall guilty, especially for having feelings we do not control), some bits of Kant and Pascal (pride is the worst, we’re all falling into nothingness and trying to forget it) (Well, you probably know that. I mean they are the most relevant part of their “philosophy” for me. And simplified. I shall not be quoted on that). They are books that “fit” me, when I read them for the first time I had the feeling that it was... revealing how the world is, really. “Oh, so that’s how it works, it fits with what I can see and feel.” At the same time they reinforce this initial, disorganized worldview, and they become part of me (I mean, more than usual books).

For a long time, I have wondered how it was that all the books that I felt fit me had the most depressing worldview (maybe not the most, but not really the most joyful outlook on what life is). That they were the ones that “resonate”, which is not something I can control (I’d love to feel that there is a god loving us and that all this does have a meaning, I just can’t). But I have noticed, quite recently, that there are other books that can resonate with my... mmm... happy self. That I do feel “oh yes, the world is like that”, but also “oh yes, I WANT the world to be like that, it would be awesome if it was true, I can decide to believe that their understanding of life “fits” the world”. They are mostly the picture books, but there is also Mary Oliver’s poetry, and weirdly, Bill Bryson, (and, in a more complicated way, Susan Sontag and Simone de Beauvoir, about the intellectual side of life). They all make me want to see the world like them and offer a world interpretation which still fits with some of my feelings.

So I thought, hey, that’s good, I should totally find things reinforcing my feeling that life is not just about shame and guilt (see how I am good, nurturing not exclusively negative things ). So I am looking for more books like that.