Serendipity

Well, I just decided to dive into a personal study of philosophy that I had always wanted to find the time to get around to. A friend suggested that I start with Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and that it had really changed their life... now here is the strange little piece of serendipity... I walked to my bookshelf thinking, "I will have to order this book," and I reached for what I thought was a book about Sartre and understanding his writings, but instead, what I was holding in my hand was Sartre, Being and Nothingness. Now, I only have about 20 books on my to-read shelf, so one would think that I would know what those books were. It took me a while to remember that one of Anna's roommates let us go through her goodwill-book box and that was my choice, not knowing what it was. Anyhow, it was VERY strange.

So far it is extremely dense reading. I had to read the intro 3 times and look up a couple latin words just to understand the part about consciousness not being the same as the process of rational contemplation, and how the ego lies at the intersection of all the things that the consciousness perceives, and doesn't really exist statically, but only when one tries to examine it.... or something along those lines? It reminds me of the book The "Spell of the Sensuous" that Anna lent me, which must have been heavily influenced by existentialism. It talks a lot about how the self really exists outside of the body, within all the interactions with other animate and inanimate things, and how when we put ourselves in these sterile constructed environments and no longer interact with the natural world, we lose a good portion of what used to make us human.

Anyhow, I am excited to try and make heads of it.