I read the most amazing book today. It’s called God’s Debris and it’s by Scott Adams, you know, the Dilbert guy. It only took me about an hour to read but it has certainly provoked much more than an hour’s worth of thought.

Debris reminds me of another book I read recently, Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. I don’t know if I’ve actually promoted many books thus far but I feel it’s important to share the titles of these two. I’m not saying you have to read these—they will change your life. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong is another one that might change your life. Or they all might make you really angry and wonder what the hell is wrong with people today.

I’m getting off point, finding it difficult to focus you understand. The point I’m trying to make here is that no one can tell you what will change your life or not. No one can tell you what will make you think. A Patrick Swayze (is that how you spell that?) movie might make you think for goodness’ sake, there is just no predicting these things. But these books—these are books that I’m almost willing to bet no two people have the same opinion of.

I suppose what interests me the most is that within their covers you see original human thought at work, or as original as human thought gets anyway. You see people willing to stretch what they think they know and smother themselves in what they know they don’t. It’s…intoxicating. To surround yourself with what you don’t know, acknowledge that you don’t know it, revel in not knowing it and then, slowly, painfully, try to claw your way out—that’s discovery. That’s worth doing.

Who cares about what we know? What we’ve already figured out? I can no more convince you of what I know than you could convince me I don’t know it. Knowledge is…illusory. Fickle, if you will. But there’s so much of it out there!

I use to complain that I wanted a handbook, a guide. I wanted to run away to a monastery and have the monks train me in the ways of wisdom and self. I knew there must be a secret cult somewhere with all the answers and if I asked enough questions I would find it, or they would find me.

There were many things wrong with this want (other than the obvious) but most importantly was the idea that anyone could teach me what I needed to know, and that the knowledge wasn’t already out there waiting to be harvested. It’s there; it’s all there. The human mind, when taken as a sum of every thought written down thus far, is a brilliant thing. Classics people. Literature. It’s all already there. But, you must be willing to work for it, and you must be willing to search for it. There’s a lot of drivel in the English cannon that passes for literature, believe me. And there are brilliant ideas off the beaten path. But how do you find them? How do you stumble across them?

Word of mouth helps, talking helps. Finding out what people read and why. I’ve given you three titles here, but I doubt they do much for many of you. These are my books you see. These are the books that changed me. They might not change you. But, the only what to know is to read them and that I cannot do for you.

I cannot share my knowledge, because my knowledge exists only in my reality and my reality is not your reality. I am, however, more than interested in discussing life, the universe, and everything. In particular I have some very pressing physics questions for any scientists out there. So, drop by if your in town. We’ll have tea and talk about books.