Thank You, Dreamers

Keep up with Ben’s latest projects at about.me/byfaroe

After more than two years of fun, creativity, letters, stories and friendship, I am sad but joyful as I announce that the Dream World Collective is coming to a close.

I’m sad because I love the dreams and inspirations that the Collective came to symbolize for me, and now it is time to let this symbol go. It is a simple and healthy sadness, one that will run its course and fade away.

The joy, on the other hand, is going to last a very long time indeed. That’s because the joy is based on something much more permanent than a symbol. It comes from you, the people who have taken the time to talk with me and write one another letters and seek truth and create beauty and spread love.

See, I knew from the beginning that the Collective would end one day. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but that was always part of the plan. Wise leadership, like wise living and wise creating, involves knowing when to accept an ending to make room for healthier new beginnings.

Parts of it didn’t go how I expected. Heh. To say the least. But it has been lovely. I’ve learned astonishing amounts about what is beautiful in life and how to find more of it. I’ve learned that there is power in starting and that fake deadlines work. I’ve discovered, to my chagrin, that the world does not see things while they’re still in my head. And I’ve found confirmation that people are just as interesting and deep and valuable as I expected.

Please keep in touch. I’ll still be posting from time to time on my new blog, Benjamin’s Blog, at benjamins.blog.com, and you can track what I’m up to by visiting about.me/byfaroe. A few traces of the Collective will still exist, at least for a while, at the Dream World Collective’s Kiva Team and Facebook page. And I’d love to hear from you. Write to me at faroeb at gmail dot com or leave comments below. Tell me about your life and projects and ideas.

Charlotte, thank you for your lovely letters and for hosting us in Seattle and for being a friend I can permanently depend on. May God give you strong friends and a deep, joyful sense of purpose in your new home.

Amanda, you are a rare and poetical soul. I think you understand some parts of me that few others do, and it is deeply refreshing. Stay quirky, stay true.

Lauren W, keep writing. And move to Baltimore. You are more beautiful, fun and clever than you think. And I’m not just saying that.

Aaron, also move to Baltimore. Thank you for always seeking the truth and always turning me back to Christ. You’d think I’d get the idea after a while.

Lauren M, my favoritest sister– Gosh, I’m just glad you exist. You have no idea what it did to me when I learned you were reading my story. You’re so kind and so much fun in such smart ways. Stay joyful. Visit when you can. There are rooms of free books nearby and I’ll bake for you.

Ivy, thank you. There were honestly times in this project that your enthusiasm was the only thing keeping me going. God has made you a very special kind of person. You know that weird thing inside of you, that practically nobody gets? Stick with it. There are acts of love and creation in this world that only you are capable of. Find them, and don’t let anybody stop you. It’s worth it and Jesus loves you like nobody’s business, always, indelibly.

Kristen, my beloved, queen of my heart. You’re in a class of your own, my gem and the fire in my eyes. I am so glad you are my opposite, and so glad you’re on my team. I love you.

Glossary: The Good Life

What I mean by the Good Life is a lifestyle of finding, appreciating and spreading truth, beauty and love. That’s a good working definition for our current purposes.

By truth, I mean the way things actually are, a coherent account of reality. Beauty is that which is directly pleasing for its own sake. Blueberries taste good simply because the taste of blueberries tastes good. That is a beautiful flavor. Love is trickier, but I think it’s something about sacrificially helping people become who they are made to be. And enjoying them before they get there, and sticking with them in the meantime. Something along those lines.

The Good Life includes an element of continuous growth. I’m pretty sure you can’t stop learning, loving and finding new pleasures without turning stagnant. There is always more truth to internalize, fresh beauty to experience, deeper love to give. During that forward motion, the Good Life also involves the discipline of engaging fully with each moment and choosing contentment where you are. Keep moving, but pay attention to the journey. Finally, all of these things work better when we’re in it together than they do when we’re alone. Best of all is when we help others experience it more fully, too, because joy is not full until it is shared.

So finding, appreciating and spreading truth, beauty and love.

It’s worth adding that this does not mean a life without pain. Pain is a fantastic driver of growth. My view is that pain is good as a means to an end, awful as an end in itself. Use your pain as a tool for growth while it lasts, then put it away and move on when it’s done. This is the path to maturity, and maturity expands your capacity to live the good life. It’s the mature people who most deeply appreciate art, relish wine, savor sex, commit to friends, value people, understand nature and sink deep into the satisfaction of very hard work.

I have become convinced that Jesus is at the core of this life. The constant craving for the Good Life is a fire inside me, and Jesus was my spark. He has been the pathway, the guide and the destination of every stage of my journey so far, and he keeps opening the doors wider, turning the lights up brighter, bringing out new varieties of sushi for me to try. I’m not being religious when I say that Jesus is simply and fully the most engaging, clear-eyed, vividly alive man I have ever known. He has embraced the deepest pains and now enjoys the richest possible enjoyment of truth, beauty and love, so he’s got some incredible stories to tell. I’d be happy to talk more about this with you if you’re interested (because, admittedly, it complicates things that he is invisible to most of us at present.)

I’d also love to hear your thoughts and stories about your own pursuit of the good life. Anything to add or remove from the definition I’m using? Any great stories of contentment or growth or struggle you’d like to share?

Way Too Many Books!



There are way, way too many books to deal with. It’s insane! Right?

What makes the problem…I’ll say clearer (because it’s both better and worse) is that I just moved in next door to the Book Thing of Baltimore. Rooms full of free books, every weekend, totally free. Actually entirely free books, and lots of them.

Along with that, I’ve got a bibliophilic father and well-read friends and interesting strangers constantly recommending the most fascinating, informative books ever. And often giving me copies of them. I’m also not bad at discovering my own luscious little bibliographic temptations. So I will never run out of books to read, and never read all the books I’m interested in.

I find two insights here.




1. I don’t need to own (many) books.

I spend much more time looking at my non-reference books than reading them. So this is actually efficient. In a manner of speaking.

I long ago gave up the ideal of a vast personal library, around the third time I had to pack up my dorm room. It turns out boxing and re-boxing a hundred thousand pages I haven’t even read yet is no fun, and these days it’s not even helpful.

My new ideal is a minimal, highly agile personal library. Reference books I actually use, books I love and will read over and over, books worth lending or giving away, books with strong sentimental value or aesthetic appeal.¹ Anything else I can get for free (or close to it) whenever I want it for as long as I need it, and give it back when I’m done. Books are a river flowing past me, not a dragon’s hoard to sleep on.

Personal libraries have always been a luxury, but these days they are sheer extravagance.  They justified themselves in the past by providing access to otherwise unavailable books. Now, unless you’re a specialist who really uses them all a lot, a big set of paper books is a showcase. Do feel free to build one if you’re willing to mess with the expense, maintenance, storage, transport, etc., but do it for physically aesthetic reasons, not out of any illusion that it makes you erudite. Erudition comes from engaging with books, not owning them. As long as they’re just sitting in your house, they’re decoration. In my case, my lovely rare pearl of a wife let me sort our books by color instead of genre.²




2. I need a strategy.

Not only do I not need to collect books, I need to pare down and direct the steady stream of them that flows through my life. I have seven or ten books I want to read next. Forget all the books I want to read ever. And where do you start? What happens when people recommend five books for every one I read?

The categories aren't really necessary. Pro: I can pick my top books for various moods at once. Con: I have to check the tops of seven different lists.

I’ve been experimenting with a new system to make sense of my reading choices. Starting assumption is that I can’t read everything I want to in this lifetime. That means I have to pick some possibilities over others, and that presents a toehold. I created a list of all the books I might want to read sometime, without getting ridiculous about it.³ Then I sorted them. Take the top two. If I could only read one of them, which one should it be? Cool. Now bring in a third. Etc.

The beauty of this is that I always have a fairly good idea of what I want to read next, though of course my lists and tastes are both fluid. Anytime someone recommends a book, I just pop it on the list and bubble sort it into the right spot. If I don’t currently possess the top few books I can keep an eye out for them in my various sources while moving on to the next one in the meantime.

And the especially beautiful bit is that if a book just randomly catches my eye, as books so frequently do, I don’t really need to go through a whole rigmarole to decide whether it’s worth my time, nor do I implicitly shove aside every other book in the world for it merely because it exists. I just decide whether I want to read it more or less than the top book or two on the list. If I do, great. I start reading. If not, I can just pop it on the list and sort it into the right position next time I have a free minute.

Another element of the stratagem is to become more selective about how I read, which involves knowing why I’m reading something before I start. There are books I’ve read recently in about fifteen minutes, if you call what I did reading a book. I know what I’m there for, I find it, snatch it and leave the rest. For example, there was a book on (heh) speed-reading recently. I realized I knew most of it already and mostly just have to do it instead of reading it again, so I started skimming through it in case there were any ideas or exercises I don’t know yet. Turns out there was an article halfway through the book that was the most cogent, information-rich summary of speed-reading I’ve ever seen. I read those six pages and gave the book back to the Book Thing.

So don’t feel constrained to read all the words in a book if they’re not the good words, and don’t feel like you have to read a book just because someone told you it’s brilliant. If you cut your reading goal down to the top tenth of a percent of the brilliant books in the world, you’d still be in massive trouble. There are brilliant books you’ll never read. Get over it, and spend your time sucking the marrow out of the books you will read instead of fretting over the rest.




Comments Save Lives

Tell me your story, too. I probably don’t even need to ask a question here. You guys are huge geeks just like me, and I love you for it. I want to hear about your bookish joys and dilemmas and compulsions and solutions. And (yes, fine, I can’t help myself) recommendations.
—

¹ I’m not there yet, by the way. But I’m closer than I was a couple years ago and getting closer all the time.

² It adds 30-45 seconds when I want to find my next book to read, but that’s only a few minutes a month. In return, I get to appreciate their beauty all the time. I intentionally kept the color spectrum a little imperfect, because I don’t want to worry about whether I’m putting books back in exactly the right spot.

³ I mean, once you have the list, books you might want to read will easily find their way onto it. Don’t worry about comprehensiveness at the beginning or you’ll go insane.

Chance of Flurries

Yay!

Remember Project Flurry? I am eager to present you with not one, but two new Flurries that have come home to roost. In light of her courage in the face of undisclosed distress and in honor of her Flurry’s successful return and proliferation, I hereby award Amanda the Order of the Flurry, First Class.

It is with excitement, delectation and some surprise that I also award myself, Ben, the Order of the Flurry, First Class.

Huzzah! Harrumph!

Amanda’s Flurry lived up to its name, generating a sub-flurry of beautiful postcards, as well as a delicious bonus page:

Here was her example postcard:

And the postcards that resulted:

Mine was a bit more cerebral, and on butcher paper. I presented the question:

If there were 100 of you, what would you do?

What if it were not 100 of you, but 100 people (with different skills and backgrounds) who completely understood and agreed with you? What would you do?

Here are some lovely people’s gobsmackingly lovely replies:

________                ________

FIN

(Huzzah!)