Do you remember a book you were assigned to read when you were in school that you did not like?
For me that book was The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
It was required reading in the 9th grade curriculum and I could not stand it.
I didn’t understand why we had to read a book about an old fisherman on a quest to catch a giant marlin. It was painfully slow -- and boring to the nth degree.
Hemingway did not write that book for 15 year old girls coming of age in the 1980s.
Hemingway wrote that book for himself, and for the avatar of who he wanted the world to believe him to be. It garnered him a Pulitzer Prize for literature, and was the last major work of fiction he wrote.
Because The Old Man and the Sea was my first introduction to Ernest Hemingway, I decided not to like him or anything he wrote. To me, he was a gruff old guy who drank too much and wrote boring books.
Fast forward to this week. I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ 6-hour documentary about Ernest Hemingway and have reconsidered my former opinion about him.
Do I still think he was a world-class a-hole? Yes.
But he was also a genius. A man who showed up to his writing every day. A man who loved his children. A man who asked big questions about life and death in the books and short stories he wrote. A man who was haunted by generational trauma and mental health challenges that ultimately cost him his life.
I wasn’t ready for The Old Man and the Sea when it showed up in my life. You may feel the same way about the book you didn’t like all those years ago when you were in school and had to go along with what the curriculum chose for you.
You may feel that way about a lot of things you’re exposed to in this non-stop scrolling, 24/7 world we now live in. Timing is everything. So is knowing when you’re ready to consider exploring something new, or reconsidering something you once thought wasn’t for you.
We tend to do better when we have personal agency over what we choose to invest our time into doing. Not so well when we feel boxed in or forced to participate in what “they” say (whoever “they” are) is best for us or should be doing. That goes for anyone building an independent practice or business; an employee looking for a promotion; a professional thinking about getting an advanced degree.
It’s better when we get to choose.
As you go about the rest of your week, what might be worthy of your reconsideration?
Is there something you once wrote off that might no longer be what you once thought?
In what ways have you changed your point of view?
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