2012 is now in its final week.
Within but a few days, we’ll be starting new year.
And with new year dawning, there will always be talks about self improvement.
I know that more than a few of you will be making resolutions, and I also know that the majority of you who make these resolutions will soon be breaking them.
I know.
I’ve never been able to keep to one.
Instead, I’ve come to the conclusion that a more fruitful enterprise is to spend the new week reading and thinking.
In my undergrad days, when I had nearly a month off for Christmas, I’d spend the entire week between Christmas and New Year reading books. I know that I’d just sequester myself off in my room and read and read and read.
Books make us grow.
Each year, the books I would want to read would be different.
Sometimes I read new ones. Sometimes I read old favorites.
But I always read.
That’s the only way I’ve been able to change.
Setting out arbitrary rules for my life is just a good way for the rules to be broken.
This year I’m not going to have time for the books.
A piece of me wishes that I had been born in Medieval times, when I could join a monastery and spend all my time writing and reading and walking the countryside:
So if you have time this week, don’t make resolutions.
Take time to read and think.
And that will do you much more good.
Natural History 
Already have my books lined up–went to a used bookstore last week and loaded up.
Hi Retrieverman,
You are so right that reading and reflection (and writing) are an incredible way to spend your time. May I also recommend spending an hour a day listening to the Holosync tapes from Centerpointe Institute. Bill Harris who created them is pretty full of himself and constantly tries to sell new and improved versions which I just ignore. They are a couple of hundred dollars but are well worth the expenditure. Happy Holidays from California Rattlesnake.
Sent from my iPad
A great post this one.
I use my commute time to job for reading non fiction books on nature, nature conservation and adventure. The best reads for me this year were Susan Orlean’s ‘Rin Tin Tin’, Tristan Gooley’s ‘Natural Explorer’, William Stolzenburg’s ‘Rat Island’, Alastaire Humphrey’s ‘There will be other rivers’ and Cat Urbigkit’s ‘Shepherds of the Coyote Rock’.
My resolution for 2012 was to hike with my dog and human companions more and more, which I was successful in doing. For 2013, it is going to put Gooley’s advice around nature exploration into practice. Let us see how it goes.
This blog has been informative too. Eye opening and knowledge imparting discussions that disconfirmed many of my beliefs – what else could I wish for.
Thank you Scottie and the participants for keeping this very interesting.
Slightly belated Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year in advance to all of you.
And may you soon have a joyous Milad un Nabi, Suhail.
BTW Scottie, thanks greatly for the musical piece–music like this speaks to me at a visceral level in a way that I cannot rationalize.
One of my new (used) dog books is entitled: ‘Dogs Never Lie about Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs’, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, reprint, Random House, 1998. Dr. Masson is a psychoanalyst so he brings an unashamedly soft-science approach to the subject of emotions in general, of emotions in dogs in particular, as well as in cross-species emotional bonding.
The following is just one of the more interesting quotes from his book so far–just the kind of speculation that Scottie and his readers seem to relish.
“The German scholar Eberhard Trumler suggests that it was not wolves who joined the human fold but the opposite. He pointed out that wolves, phylogenetically older than us and superbly equipped for hunting, had no need of human help. Men, on the other hand, derive from plant-eating ancestors and are not nearly as well equipped for hunting as are wolves. In order to eat, wolves scarcely need us at all, but we could benefit from the help of wolves. It may well be that human groups followed wolf packs, waited until they had brought down a kill, then chased the wolves away. Indian wolves are often chased away from their kills by wild pigs, and the same could have been true of early humans and wolves.”
I have that book. I got it when it first came out.
It’s somewhat dated and Moussaieff Masson is very much into the neoteny stuff (and writes about all that misleading stuff about brain size).
He’s also a vegan, a Sanskrit scholar, a former director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, and lost a big time free speech case in the Supreme Court.
http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_id=20
It’s an interesting book though.
I always make fun of female dogs named Sasha. Sasha in Russian is a man’s name– a nickname for Alexander.
When I hear the name Sasha, I think of this famous jaguar hunter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Siemel
Ah, yet another example of “feet of clay”. But as you say, it is an interesting book, deliberately ignoring the whole relative intelligence argument and concentrating on the emotional spectrum in dogs and people.
BTW: growing up in a Polish neighborhood in Chicago, I became well acquainted w/ Slavic naming conventions. For example, my Dad’s best friend, John Palka, was always called Yashu; while my grandparents neighbors had two daughters, a bit younger than I, who were nicknamed Yasha and Stasha. (I disremember their real given names.)