Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

In a recent conversation an interesting thought was lobbed to the small group of us.   We all professed to enjoy reading.  Everyone had their favorites.  Then someone said that yes, he liked to read – a lot but had recently moved away from spending as much time on reading as he had before.  Why?  Because someone else had said something to the effect that if you spend a lot of time reading, you are reading someone else’s thoughts, their ideas, that your own thoughts and ideas are fashioned by that of others and that you do not, therefore, think for yourself.

Now there’s an original thought – at least it is the first time I heard it, so to me it was original.  At first blush it seems to make sense.  But on closer examination, does it?

Just how original is anything?  It is said that there is nothing new or original under the sun, just interpretations, applications and adaptations and what we do with or how we put to use that which is not new at all.

I love reading.  Always have.  Fairytales and fables were a favourite staple of mine in the early years of schooling.  I think I learned to speak English much faster because I learned from something that I enjoyed.  The stories were rich in imagery, the language simple.  It seemed to me at the time that anything was possible and even though I was keenly aware that these were just stories, it was easy to take on the role of the hero or heroine of the story.  In short, they lit a fire in my belly.

One of my teachers in grade three was Miss Natalia.  She was one of the few lay teachers the school had and we children just simply adored her.  She was at once beautiful, smart, and because she did not wear a nun’s habit, relatable.  Her job was to teach us how to write proper sentences and perhaps we may have even gone to writing paragraphs at the time – but certainly no essays as yet.  At the end of the year she gave each of us a book, a different one for each child.  How she decided on the book I don’t know, just that she must have given much thought to each choice.  Mine was Lorna Doone, by Richard Doddridge Blackmore, first published in 1869.  According to Wikipedia, it has never been out of print.

Every summer we escaped the sultry heat of Yokohama and spent the months with my grandparents in the mountainous resort of Karuizawa. That year I took my book with me and over the course of two months read and re-read this classic tale of romance, intrigue, collusion, treachery, war and finally victory by the right, the good. Of course the hero and heroine lived happily ever after!  I was hooked.

From then on the local library became a weekly destination for me.  I went there every Saturday after completing my chores to return books and borrow new ones.  I got to know the librarian very well and she always had some suggestions.  She introduced me to magazines and other genres of writing such as mystery, adventure and science fiction.  As the years tumbled one after the other, if the library was not busy, we would even spend some time talking about a special article, or an author. That along with what I learned at school fashioned my thinking, which, according to the observation of my colleague’s friend above was not mine at all, that perhaps just plain brainwashing.

Hmmm.  Is none of us brainwashed?

But what if instead of brainwashed we used another word?  Schooled?  Well informed?  Knowledgeable?  Expert?

Ah, the beauty of semantics.

It seems that at different times in my life, a different read presented itself.  When my children were toddlers there I was immersed in fairytales again reading tales of Snow White and Puss in Boots and such at bedtime to my children.  Simultaneously my children and I were introduced to Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak whose iconic book Where the Wild Things Are particularly endeared itself to my son.

Raising a family and eventually working outside the home left little time for personal reading, at least for books.  I found that I could snatch an hour here and there and that was plenty for reading articles in magazines.  My favourites became The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair – god, once again I fell in love, this time with Vanity Fair.  At first I dismissed it as yet another T&A publication on  the magazine stands – certainly the covers do nothing to dispell the casual observer from this initial dismissal and it does indeed share shelf space with other magazines of that genre.

These days I have time to read books again.  They are not always literary tomes – in fact, hardly ever are.  No, these days I am more likely to have my nose immersed in the pages of How I Made My First Million On The Internet by Ewen Chia, or F.U. Money by my friend Dan Lok.  I also like to read anything by Malcolm Gladwell. I have all his books.

Malcolm Gladwell was first thrust into the limelight with his best seller The Tipping Point.  I don’t necessarily reach for best sellers, they are often nothing more than the end result of a well conceived and orchestrated marketing campaign – but might we, internet marketers take a page from that observation?  Nevertheless, pick it up I did. Immediately I was mesmerized by this author.

There was something completely different about Malcolm Gladwell.  His writing style wasn’t exactly riveting.  Paragraphs run on for in some instances a whole page and often I found I had to reread something to get the gist of it.  No. It certainly wasn’t his writing style that captured my attention, it was well, that he was different.  He did not think like most.  Like an engineer or a scientist, he looks at things and sees what others do not, but unlike engineers and scientists he writes in a layman’s language, so even though his paragraphs may be cumbersome at times, they are completely understandable.  Malcolm digs deep, questions everything, presents his point of view without necessarily being judgemental.

So what has this got to do with independent thinking or the lack of it when all you do is read what others write?  I am currently reading Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw.  It is a collection of his original essays that were published in The New Yorker Magazine where he has been a staff writer since 1996.  Each chapter is such an essay.  I read one here and there, in between my other readings.  I like them because they are thought provoking and as such need time for proper digestion.

This morning, before sitting down at the computer to write this post I read the chapter “Something Borrowed.  Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?”  Ironically it is about originality and just how original is original.  He talks about copyrights and stolen intellectual property.  It is far too complex to discuss here, but essentially, we come back to the saying that nothing is new or original under the sun so indeed, if we read just what others write, do we think for ourselves or do we just parrot that which has been ingrained in our sponge like brain?

I think that it’s both.  Reading what others write opens up horizons.  Moreover, the more we read the more likely we are to run into opposing opinions which then hopefully, engage our brain into thinking for ourselves.  At the very basic, while I enjoy reading the articles in Vanity Fair, I do not always agree with the slant taken on the topic by the journalist.  I acknowledge that a journalist is not devoid of subjective content and has earned his or her stripes to be so, having graduated from being a reporter to that elevated distinction of being a journalist.  So to bastardize Nitzsche’s “I think therefore I am”, I’ll say that “I disagree therefore I am independent”

Of course our values and philosophies have been fashioned by much in life, that what we read being just one of them.  But if we were to subscribe to everything we read, we would be mere robots making no distinction between the different washings that our brains undergo

… or how else would you explain  the Malcolm Gladwells of the world?

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