Books, more books.....

Purging and packing my books has been a kind of archeological dig of the different layers of my life. It is so interesting to think back on my life through the lens of the kinds of books on my shelves.

There are the books on antiques, china, silver, entertaining, flower arranging, dressage riding/horse breeding, and garden design that are artifacts from what I think of as my first adult life. That's when I was helping my husband in his business and taking care of all the demands of our life but not working an outside job. I had the time, interest and money to direct towards the finer things in life and making my and his life gracious (well, that sounds a little Southern belle but I do believe those things can add beauty to one's life).

Then there was the beginning of my second adulthood without my husband....I was trying to forge my identity as someone not part of a couple. That was hard since I had never dreamed I would be single. That would be the Latin, medieval history, and the philosophy of history books I read while I was back to university thinking I would get a PhD in medieval history.

Then there was the personal development phasesince I decided I wasn't cut out to live mentally in the Middle Ages for the rest of my life, I was trying to find myself. Integral Psychology, Power of Now, Mindfulness, Science of God, etc. I really liked this phase, I'm still in it just on a scaled back version.

Then my fire lit and there came my interest in human and human system development as I was getting my Master's.....lots of chaos and complexity theory, Peter Senge, adult learning, critical thinking etc. This stuff can still get me going and much of it has been incorporated into the way I operate in this world and understand business and people.

My business phase, which was more about marketing, the experiential economy, entrepreneurship, etc.

Many of my fiction books are the thread that weaves in and out of all these phases.....I read them over with a few years in between. How many times have I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens? They are hard to beat!!

Books are my weakness but I hadn't thought of them as a record of my growth as a human, both personally and professionally. Most of them I am packing away for now. Being without most of my books will be a challenge, I love my books. I don't know what that will be like.

Oooh, this could make a great screenplay....without the presence of my books as an external symbol of what's in my head, do I have any of that knowledge in my head?? Can't you see someone's books being burned up in a fire or the irate ex taking them away, and suddenly this person doesn't know anything that was in his or her books. For some reason, I am thinking of Being John Malkovich. I think I need to go to bed, clearly my mind is working in weird ways.....:)