Reaching For Peace.

As the Juba Peace Talks complete themselves and the peace agreement is waiting to be officially signed (despite mysterious postponements by the LRA), I ponder peace and happiness.

I've often reached for happiness in many different ways, my first addiction in books. Then came music, TV, friends, partying, etc. But after I learned happiness is more mercurial than that, I began to search for it in other people, in my career, in life circumstances. If only I had that perfect job, or that perfect dog, or that perfect house, or that perfect baby.

But now I feel as if I'm progressing to a new level of understanding of happiness. Real happiness at least, not just the immediate gratification pleasure happiness that our culture is so addicted to now-a-days. Happiness is that funny and kind note from a friend. Happiness is finishing a good book having learned something about yourself and life (I guess I kept that one from childhood). Happiness is a comfortable silence with a loved one. Happiness is learning something new. In short, happiness is a myriad of things bound together by one force... me. It isn't one Ultimate thing, but a million little things that make me happy. Maybe I'll never write that perfect novel, perhaps I'll never find that perfect job, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy and it doesn't mean that I failed in any way. This is perhaps one of the harder things for my overly ambitious mind to accept.

What is happiness to you?

Jhumpa is backa!

And in my favorite form of hers too! As much as my disappointment in her novel, The Namesake, I'm thrilled that she's written another collection of short stories, which is her forte after all. Eek, so many books, so little money...

A Wrinkle in Time: A Review

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle has been a warm fuzzy memory from my childhood for a while. I was fearful of rereading it because it had inspired such awe and inspiration for me as a child, I was afraid it'd lose that magic. Much to my pleasure, it was just as amazing as I remembered, and perhaps even more so with the growth of my knowledge in child literature.

To say that A Wrinkle in Time is innovative is an understatement, especially keeping in mind the time period it was written in (1959-1960, published in 1962 after nearly 30 rejections). The ideas are unique and push the limits of your mind (well, at least my mind, but my mind is quite limited when it comes to science), in such a way that as the introduction by Anna Quindlen says, I still don't completely understand the concepts of the book. The characters are strong and memorable, as well as faulty and realistic. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Meg is given the gift of her faults, what an elegant way to tell children to accept yourself, faults and all?

L'Engle created a beautiful and challenging book for children that can still strike awe and inspiration in adults as it did with me. I never read the rest of the books in the Time trilogy, but I've purchased them and they are waiting dutifully in my TBR stack. I can't wait!

5*