So Many Ways To Say It

This summer I read a lovely book called The Five Love Languages for Singles by Gary Chapman. The book is not fancily written nor difficult to pore over; indeed, it is perhaps the most simplistic book I've read in a very long time.

The Five Love Languages is just as its title suggests: the five different ways of communicating love to others: through time, touch, words, gifts, or service and which of these is most effective for every different person.

It was a wonderfully relatable book as it featured a bountiful supply of real stories about real people and their real struggles. It has caused me this summer to see people in a very different light.

This novel explains how to determine a friend's love language and how to fill it--complimenting a friend whose language is words, giving a hug to a friend whose language is touch, and so on. This has made friendship take on a different perspective for me; now I want to find out my good friends' languages and be able to make them feel loved.

I've been able to rebuild a broken relationship with my dad, hold tight to a best friendship that is falling apart, and make an outcast feel a little more wanted just by giving her a hug.

It's so simple.

Well, I'm off to find another way to tell my recently returned sister that I love her.

Gnarly Brains

I feel that part of my head has been twisted into a gnarly tree stump after such strenuous reading. Miss Wollstonecraft certainly had a long-winded way of saying things, didn't she? (Makes me wonder if I ever do that.)

Many parts of this piece I had to reread and double reread--and I'm pretty sure some of them do not qualify as legible sentences.

I couldn't help but feel edgy at the way she worded some of her ideas, using phrases like "it is a farce" and "contempt of the understanding" (paragraphs 11 and 16).

I did find interesting her paragraph on how kings are treated differently, how it is completely unfair for men who show no better qualities than others are revered in paragraph 69 (it was also at this point I figured out "shewn" really meant "shown" and apparently those olde Englishe people didn't know how to spell).

It made me wonder why kings or celebrities or the like are so "treated with a degree of reverene that is an insult to reason," as she put it, when they are just average Joes in most aspects. What makes a king or president special enough to photograph, admire, and obey?

Miss Wollstonecraft made a good and completely unrelated point when she said that "Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship" (paragraph 39) as she explained that two marriage partners could not have a good friendship if the man always viewed her as a frail, sickly thing, that instead they needed a common respect and equality.

This article reminds me a little of Jane Eyre and the fight for women's equality amidst a society in which women were little more than pretty little jewels to be admired and then forgotten. It makes me very glad to be an American and, while perhaps not everything is equal, it is far fairer than it once was.

My brains at the moment

My Girl Hallie

As I contemplated this article, I was reminded of my favorite radio drama, Adventures in Odyssey (besides being distracted by the boxes of links that led me to too-long pages), in particular the episode My Girl Hallie.

As I had never heard of 2001: A Space Odyssey (coincidental title), I was unaware of Adventures in Odyssey's play on the aforementioned film; however, upon reading the first paragraph of Mr. Carr's article, I at once saw the correlations--the machine's emotion contrasted with human stoicism, the final words, et cetera--and was greatly pleased to have made connections.

I also felt both guilty and scammed at the research mentioned of students unable to concentrate: by the end of the third paragraph, my concentrating was drifting. Thoughts of Ray Charles and trimming my fingernails distracted my attention from the very colorful description of sea words and scuba divers.

Throughout this article I was unable to find a specific cure for our stupitidy (now that's just sad.) except for the simple act of reading.

So I suppose I should be off to read some lengthy essay that will enhance my brain.