There comes a time in a man’s life – call it middle age, call it introspection – when he asks himself certain questions – not just (and necessarily) career-wise, but regarding everything. And if we are talking about middle age, one might even ask himself the question. You might know what I am talking about, then again, you might not. It might be that each one of us has a slightly different question for themselves once they reach middle age. The question, at least for me is: how people will remember me after I am gone?
Many of us are not heroes, we are not giants, we are only average humans. And that is OK. We cannot all be heroes or extraordinary. But we can all attempt to make a positive influence in the world, be it with the fact we. are supporting charities or spreading positive vibes on our Tik-Toks. And these are the ways we can hope people will remember us.
You might have heard of a little book called “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker. While I am still in the process of reading it, the general idea as I understood it is that everything humans do´ comes from the attempt to survive death. Not survive in the spiritual sense, as in we attempt to have our soul survive our death but survive in the sense that we wish to leave something behind. He calls these attempts our “immortality projects”.
To be honest, that is what this website is. It is an attempt, however poor, to survive my own death. Yes, it is a blog about books – or at least I hope it will be, but more than anything else, if I am honest, it is an attempt to leave something very mildly useful to the world and to impact my tiny little corner of the world in a positive way. And even if I do not impact anything in any way, the very act of building, maintaining, and writing for this blog, I hope will be its own reward.
Becker argued that we all are built through our “immortality projects”, that our very personalities are derived from them. If that is true then indeed the reward should be worth the struggle, as it sounds like the struggle will be its own reward as my character will be further built through this endeavour.
So, these are the motivations behind me starting this little platform. But what it will it be about? Shortly said, it will be about books & reading. Although I do not often have as much time for reading as I would like, I would like to consider myself relatively well-read. And it is in that context that I think I can give something back – be it with book reviews or recommendations. I plan to review books I have read so far, particularly the ones that deeply impressed me and made me change my mind about certain things in life.
In addition to reviews of great and not so great works of fiction, you can also expect many reviews of non-fiction, from popular science to popular psychology, philosophy of ethics and religion. That is, II expect is what will mostly differentiate my blog from other book & reading blogs out there – you can expect to find plenty of info about non-fiction here as well.
And at last, we come to the Thema “Poetry”. Poetry is something I have gladly read and admired for a long time, but I cannot say that I have ever really understood it, and I mean – REALLY understood it, in the way the author intended it to be understood. But I do intend to amuse myself with this and get better at it, so you can expect updates from this journey as well. I do hope to be able to provide a few helpful tips about it as well.
So, there you have it. Although I suspect nobody will ever read these words here, as they are simply my thoughts and motivations and do not contain anything useful for anyone else, with this blog post, I officially declare this website launched. Let’s go!
