Encounter Your Life Story by Chance, in Bookish Living

Looking back, packing for work travel always meant taking only what was absolutely necessary.

I was always determined to snuggle my carry-on bag into the plane’s overhead compartment easy-peasy.  Hence, clothes were packed into tiny squares nice and flat with miniscule travel size bottles used to hold almost anything else.

As colleagues headed to stand-by the luggage pick-up area after reaching our destination, I was already on line to catch a cab with my nose in a book.  Just like that old saying goes, “I have my nose stuck in a book just about as often as I breathe (Guillemets, Raiding Bookshelves).”

That’s me – right there.

Taking my books on the journey was the only exception to the one bag rule.  Leaving Jane Eyre, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot and so many others behind was simply not an option.  No matter where I was headed for however long, my invisible writing companions came with me.  Through their gift of storytelling, I traveled through many of the greatest written works meeting the most unforgettable characters the world has ever known.  Whether delving into a timeless masterpiece of classic literature like The Brothers Karamazov or contemplating the beautiful gardens L.M Montgomery effortlessly painted in my mind, I remained connected to those riveting story streams like a tree drawing life sustaining water from its roots.

Leading a bookish lifestyle, I was poised to carry out my work with a focused mind and a joyful heart.  

Annotation and attempts at memorizing key passages as I do with the Psalms immeasurably added depth to my reading experience.   The lessons learned brought new meaning to the mission at hand, and expanded my creative agency through both story logic and imagination.

Bookish living meant that I could be a pilgrim at Tinker Creek while waiting for the conference to begin.

Keep watch for that evil Snow Queen and her terrible spell to distort seeing goodness in the world with clarity.

Really Capture the Castle with Dodie Smith – what a beautiful story.

Moreover, humility, courage and compassion were constant themes I used to mold and shape my own path to leadership.

How I plunged into George Eliot’s quote on the hidden life and can remember it still…

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in un-visited tombs
(Middle March).”

Hidden within story – there is something to be learned about ourselves…

Words to ponder.

Events so worthy of tucking away in memory.

In bookish living, we enter the world of story that speaks into our own.

To encounter those beautiful words long waiting to tell us something about ourselves.

So that we can come away far better, and leave us only wanting for more.