tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7257882700788109358.post7185190884675002372..comments2023-10-01T06:45:56.108-07:00Comments on Amateur: The fun principleDushkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249097846441509115noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7257882700788109358.post-60404638557853922272010-06-30T13:45:47.532-07:002010-06-30T13:45:47.532-07:00After reading this entry I am encouraged to share ...After reading this entry I am encouraged to share an experience that defies rational explanation, but was nonetheless sublime, and I believe, as you do, that learning something new every day is the most exciting thing there is. (I also think making a violin and playing Bach takes precedence not only to soccer, but just about everything else, but I did love your entry on the list by the Polish poet.) Now...to my experience: I had a very serious, difficult and absorbing translation job, which was also urgent. I don't know if the subject matter had anything to do with my experience, in which case it was a sequence of circumstances, because I had just finished four weeks at forced-labor pace, completely rewriting and revising a text of my own, that had to do with comparative mythology, and it was so fouled up that no one but me would ever have known what I meant, so obviously the revision had to be mine. Then I got the translation job, which had to do about comparative religion. Both are among my favorite topics. And I was really impassioned with all of this. I was getting up at 4 a.m. and pushing my language skills and brain focus to the limit, but I was happy about it. My clarity of mind was astonishing, and I made great progress, until the day I delivered the translation job. About an hour later we were driving someplace, I was in the car and quiet, and I was suddenly pervaded, perhaps invaded, by the most uncanny sense of serenity. I was truly placid. And then it happened. I felt myself to be weightless, filled with light and joy. It wasn't until much later, however, that it suddenly came to me, when I remembered the title of a long ago book by Milan Kundera (which by the way I never read, since I never could get into him), as I comprehended so clearly, "The Incredible Lightness of Being". Does this happen with meditation, for example? I've never been able to meditate, maybe because I never had the time. Maybe it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it might never happen again, but even though it's indescribable, here I am, trying to describe it. Awaiting comments.Carol Millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07112329558808625587noreply@blogger.com