No Self

I can't anticipate how these words of John Wheeler (http://thenaturalstate.org/) will strike you, but I found them positively enlightening:

"You are not creating thoughts. They happen spontaneously. Then we say, “I am thinking,” “I am deciding,” “I am remembering.” This is totally false. That “I” is not present in those things. It is only assumed afterwards. This assumed “I” is the ego, and it is the cause of our problems. There has never been an ego, except as an assumption."

Angela's Ashes

If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you may have noticed that I am not big on fiction. I guess I am one of those who prefers "just the facts, ma'am." But this lack of appetite for story doesn't keep me from opening up a novel now and then and reading the first page. Which is just what I did the other day with the #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. On page one we find:

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived it at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

I'm not really sure why this excerpt delights me as much as it does. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I am half Irish and was raised Catholic, and didn't exactly have the happiest of childhoods. But in any case, I find this eloquent passage so deliciously funny and clever that I am inclined to read the whole novel, but doubt if I will. Who's got time for storytelling? Not me, despite the fact that man has been defined as "the story telling animal." But that's another story....