the more you read, the more you know

Burlington Harbor

Just a head's up: I'll be going off the grid for the next two weeks to enjoy some bucket-list worthy travel with two of my favorite people on the planet--my daughters. We're off to Lake Como in northern Italy, and from there, up into the Swiss Alps to a little village called Wengen. I've been working out and walking a lot for the past few weeks to get in shape for some hiking. I picked up a few necessary items: a good backpack, hiking shoes, and a jacket (it snowed there last week!). My bags are packed. Our itinerary is tentatively in place. There's just one problem: what will I read on the way??

"Reading can take you places 

you've never been before."

~Dr. Seuss~

Case in point...

In addition to laying in supplies and challenging my legs in preparation for our trip, I picked out a couple of books that sounded interesting. Nothing too thick or heavy. I have a hard time focusing on reading in an airplane unless I'm seriously engaged in the topic, so I came up with a few books that were referenced in something else I was reading or books I found in the bibliography or on-line. The problem is now I can't decide which ones will come with me. 

I have "Wherever You Go, There You Are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It sounded apropos, but I actually ordered it a while back in preparation for a meditation retreat with him next year, some twenty years after my first retreat with him.

But...I'll probably finish it before we leave.

Which leaves me with three other choices:

1. 
   
   

It also sounded apropos considering what is happening in our world...but that's not what it's about. 

"When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionize our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.
With breakneck pace and wondrous detail, Benjamín Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to break open the stories of scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible."

...like quantum theory, singularity, and nuclear fission. Enough to drive anyone mad.

    2.

The author of this book is an experimental psychologist and clinical hypnotherapist who starts off with the three concepts that drove my interest in alternative healing methods early on, in the 1970s, when all of it was (and for many of the orthodox medical elite, still is) considered snake oil...hogwash...naive stupidity. These include clinical hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, and neuroplasticity, among others. 

This one is definitely going with me!

    3.

In this book, the author revisits the wisdom that suggests our emotions are inseparable from our physiology and health. He explores the idea that repressed emotions create stress that can lead to disease, in particular auto-immune diseases...which is big issue in my family of origin. So, of course, I'm interested. He argues that taking time to listen to our patients' stories is a lost art.

This one will be going with me, too. 

So, I guess that's settled.

Not a mystery or romance among them. No fantasy or horror. Nothing to do with politics. Nevertheless...if that's what you prefer to read, we can still be friends, right? Right??

"The more you read, the more things you know.

The more that you learn,

the more places you'll go."

~Dr. Seuss, again~

Bis Widerhuege! Which is Swiss German for goodbye...see you again!

jan