Time Alone (With Dr. M. Scott Peck)

This past week, I've been taking lunchtime walks downtown to find a quiet spot to read a book. This has to do with the fact that I've been super depressed again the last week and a half, after being pretty much okay since January. A particular facet of my work environment (having to do with neighbors and phone calls) is the culprit behind the aggravation, and it's led me to step outside into the sunshine and walk my depression away.

Today was particularly hard, though for a different reason, and I found that once I stepped out into the wide, open space of the city streets, I actually breathed a sigh of relief. And I don't know if it was the open spaces, or the sunshine and the cloudless sky, or just the transition from enclosed halls with shuffling bodies and artificial light. I realized in mid-sigh just how stressed I must've been to actually have to sigh, plus mutter, "Hay, salamat..."

So the book I've been reading in that quiet spot downtown is The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.

It just blows my mind.

I don't remember when I first heard about it, but I do remember when I got a hint that it must be special. I had a teacher back in university named Jenny Dy, who was our instructor in Electrical Engineering 9. She was young, extremely intelligent, and also very nice. Twice a week during class she'd walk into the classroom, one arm cradling her lesson plan, notes, and EE books. On top of the stack: this neat-looking paperback called The Road Less Traveled. It sounded familiar. It stuck.

A few months ago as I was going through a very difficult time, I sought refuge in literature. Not fiction (my default), but self-help books, which I've been reading more and more of in the last few years. One night I emerged from a nearby bookstore with six, among them The Road Less Traveled. This was back in October, yet I just started reading it this week.

"Traveled" is so packed with the author's ideas, it's just so dense that what I read for a mere 15 minutes is more than enough to have to absorb in the next 24 hours. For example, today I read a section called "Escape from Freedom", where he describes people who whine and complain about their lives yet do not recognize that their lives are in their hands. They are escaping from freedom, because they are escaping from their responsibilities, their freedom to make choices and to act on their situation. They blame other people, or their past, or the situation they're in, but they don't see that the problem is with them.

He also ties this in with how these attitudes are ingrained in us as children. Parents have much power over their children's perceptions of the world. Kids who do not acquire love and security while growing up, who do not see discipline in their parents, themselves become adults who do not value themselves, cannot delay gratification, do not develop discipline, and refuse to take responsibility.

What an awesome book. Thanks, Ms. Jenny of EE9. The second best thing I took away from your class was digital circuits.