Becca Faith Yoga

I’ve been reading a lot of Buddhist literature lately.  It’s great stuff, really, but it’s heavy stuff (really).  Sometimes I feel myself falling less in love with reading (how do you reverse-fall?), and that’s when I know it’s time to pick up a really excellent novel and rekindle that at-first-sight feeling.

Staring at my bookshelf, I realized that despite touting The World According to Garp as one of my favorite books of all time, I haven’t read too much else by John Irving.  I vaguely remember reading The Fourth Hand before giving it to an ex-boyfriend as a gift, but I only did that so we could talk about it (we never did). I always end up looking at Irving’s books in book stores, but somehow I end up buying something else, or nothing at all.  So when I saw A Widow for One Year languishing between Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Carson’s Autobiography of Red, I grabbed it.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Okay, maybe not ever. But definitely a winning choice.  Somehow I forgot that Irving doesn’t just intrigue me with his writing, he makes me want to pick up a pen.  In this particular novel, Irving writes about writers, which is a special treat in the sense that it feels like you’re getting really excellent advice from a variety of talented authors. Of course, they’re all Irving and no one’s really giving advice, but if you read the book you’ll see what I mean.  Anyway, it’s not the point.

The point is, I’ve gotten further away from my self-identification as an avid reader and aspiring writer over the years, and it makes me a bit sad.  I’ve never stopped being either, necessarily, but I’ve certainly ambled down other paths and found other passions.  Of course I don’t believe that I have to choose just one thing, and in my heart I never have. But it seems like I’ve forgotten little pieces of who I am, who I wanted to be. And that…sucks.

We grow up filling our minds with capitalized nouns: Astronaut. Ballerina. Firefighter. Writer. Actress. Professional Ice Cream Taster. Then at some point along the way, those things become our hobbies, or what we used to love, or the thing we laugh at because it seems puerile and out-of-reach.  But the truth is, we wear a million different hats in a single lifetime, and just because you hang one on its peg to dance around in a new, purple-polka-dotted pageboy cap, doesn’t mean you can’t pick up your fedora every once in awhile.

Whatever happened to all the things we could have been?

They’re still there, capital letters and all. So here’s me, promising to put on my top hat and Write, two mornings a week, until…