On Reading A Book With No Baggage

Guess what? Today you get to do an activity!! Yay!! So, what I want you to do is either get up and walk around or just look at the stuff around you. As your eyes wander over the many items that surround your computer or desk or whatever, try to leave all your judgments and past experiences behind. Try to not think of anything but that object that you are looking at.

It's kind of hard, isn't it, to not bring our past experiences and judgments and thoughts to the experiences of our present. Our brain is always churning out thoughts and judgments and reminders and it attaches meaning to objects based on different things that we've experienced in our lives.

So I was thinking about this the other day in relation to reading a book. When I read a book, I bring all my past experiences and judgments of previous books and stories I have read and wrote to the forefront when I am reading a book, and that then affects my experience of that book.

Maybe because I've read way too many cheesy romance novels, I just can't get into this romance novel even though it's not too cheesy. Or something along those lines.

But then I thought: what if we DIDN'T lug along those thoughts from our past to the experiences of our present? What if we could just enjoy the book we are reading AS IS, without comparing or contrasting or measuring up or any of that stuff?

Would we be able to enjoy the book more, see things that we'd never be able to see otherwise? Or are those judgments based on our past just part of how we read?

Hmm...



Bring the suitcase? Or trash it?