Just a whisper away, waiting for me.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step in getting it fixed, right? So, I have a problem. Sometimes I suffer from a lack of attention span late at night. I want to read a book, but instead, I find myself sitting in front of one of my many bookshelves, looking over my books, but rarely finding one to settle down and read outright. Instead, I find myself pulling a book off the shelf, paging through until I find a familiar passage, read it, and then move onto the next book; trolling through the pages for my favorite lines. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I could have read a good portion of one book in full by the time I’m done with my ritual, but, would I be more satisfied?

I have a favorite passage in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. In it Mr. Rochester is talking to Thursday Next about how he lives his life. He is a book character, and so only exists within those few hundred pages. He is brought forth, a fully grown man, in the first scenes where he stumbles across Jane Eyre, and continues on his existence until he loses Jane after the interrupted wedding scene (in Fforde’s version of England in 1986, Jane does not come back to Thornfield in Jane Eyre). His Mr. Rochester remarks that he often travels back and forth to his favorite times spent getting to know Jane Eyre, but he also must go to the times of heartbreak as well, if only to gain additional appreciation of the good times.

I know that there is no way to travel back and forth in my life, such things are not possible for mere humans, and yet, when I scan my bookshelves, I am traveling. Back sometimes, to that former girl-child I was, and perhaps even forward, as I age and grow, knowing my ever familiar favorite books are there to assist me with each new chapter of my own life, and finding new books to enrich me. Because, while not being able to travel about in books, I have found the next best thing. Re-reading through my favorite passages can take me back to where I was when I first read the novel (either in a physical place or where I was mentally), or when I was re-reading it and the passage first struck me. I seek to find certain books and chapters that inform my life and remind me of ways I can improve myself or give me hope for better things to come.

If I could really time travel, however, I wonder if I would focus on those times I was happiest, or those that made me stretch and grow as a person. Our trials are engraved on us, and make us richer, but, thank goodness for those moments of lightness that keep us sane! If we are fortunate, perhaps those moments in our life are the same and we are happiest in the present. Either way, with a good book in hand, the road cannot be too bumpy (or slippy) ahead.

So, if you could pick a time or place in your life to go back to (or even to look forward to) where would it be? Or are you content in the moment?

Perhaps I'll be trolling my bookshelves tonight!