What I’m Reading: Contradictions

Sometimes I feel that my life is just one big contradiction.  I want things both ways.

I want to lose 10 pounds but I want to eat that whole box of Thin Mint cookies that were delivered to my house this weekend.

I want to be a volunteer more but I’m selfish with my free time.

I want to spend more time reading my professional publications but find myself flipping through the new issue of MORE instead.

I want to be healthy into my old age, but can’t find the self discipline to take my vitamin every day.

There’s even a verse in the Bible about this.  Paul says, (my translation) “What I want to do, I don’t and what a don’t want to do, I do.”

Sounds like it’s just what we have to deal with, being human and all.  This constant push and pull of emotions and desires. The friction it causes in our lives and our relationships.

One of the books JD got me for Christmas captures this dilemma better than any I’ve ever read before.  It is a series of short stories that are so beautifully written that it may have converted me to a short story lover.  Usually the longer and more involved the plot and the deeper into the character I can get, the better.  Short stories always seem to end abruptly just as I’m starting to feel something for the people I’m reading about.

But these stories…..

I only wish there had been a dozen more.