Conversational advice on reading from former President Teddy Roosevelt: learning how to get the most out of what you read.

Hello again, dear reader, during yesterday's discussion. We pontificated on how to make productive use of every spare moment. One can find throughout the day, one of the suggestions of course was reading an essay reading is one of my all-time favorite pastimes. Some days I read more than one book at a time (before you ask dear reader. I don't necessarily finish them. I just read the one book in the morning and another book in the afternoon or evening as the case may be. Depending on my mood) and a very productive way to spend any spare moment, I thought I would see if I could find an interesting starting point for a discussion on reading and/or reading habits. And lo and behold, I came across this extremely fascinating conversation concerning Teddy Roosevelt and his thoughts on reading and reading habits. So I thought I would share it with you dear reader. As a way of demonstrating why it is so important to read quality material, rather than your favorite celebrity's blog (although occasionally that's fun too, sort of like junk food for the brain.) And develop solid reading habits and analytical skills. Now I'm not saying by the end of this conversation. You too will be able to speed read three books a day. Like Mr. Roosevelt, but hopefully dear reader, you will be inspired to look at literature and reading in a slightly different light... (Before I forget, I am aware, dear reader, that some of Mr. Roosevelt's opinions and comments might seem a little strange. By today's standards, but given the context of his time, and his place in society. He was considered very progressive for his day. It is also important to note that I did not change or alter any part of Mr. Roosevelt's words. Nor did I conduct the research into these words myself. I just tried to provide a context for the conversation)




A note to you dear reader: Theodore Roosevelt is known to have been one of the most voracious readers in all of history. He could speed-read his way through up to three books per day. So of course he was asked by many people about his reading habits, and thoughtfully responded to these queries in a number of ways. One was a letter in which he recommended a list of books for a young man to read.
He offered more wisdom in his autobiography, in which he wrote about his library at his Sagamore Hill home, the genres and authors he preferred to read and collect, as well as a number of tidbits of advice that all readers should heed. As you’ll come to find, TR had a refreshingly flexible approach to what constitutes good reading habits.
____________________
I could not name any principle upon which the books [in Sagamore Hill] have been gathered. Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls “the mad pride of intellectuality,” taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.
Of course there are books which a man or woman uses as instruments of a profession — law books, medical books, cookery books, and the like. I am not speaking of these, for they are not properly “books” at all; they come in the category of time-tables, telephone directories, and other useful agencies of civilized life. I am speaking of books that are meant to be read. Personally, granted that these books are decent and healthy, the one test to which I demand that they all submit is that of being interesting. If the book is not interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesimal number of cases it gives scant benefit to the reader.
Of course any reader ought to cultivate his or her taste so that good books will appeal to it, and that trash won’t. But after this point has once been reached, the needs of each reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal to those needs. Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.
Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes in which he cannot expect that any but a few friends will share. Now, I am very proud of my big-game library. I suppose there must be many big-game libraries in Continental Europe, and possibly in England, more extensive than mine, but I have not happened to come across any such library in this country. Some of the originals go back to the sixteenth century, and there are copies or reproductions of the two or three most famous hunting books of the Middle Ages, such as the Duke of York’s translation of Gaston Phoebus, and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilian. It is only very occasionally that I meet any one who cares for any of these books. On the other hand, I expect to find many friends who will turn naturally to some of the old or the new books of poetry or romance or history to which we of the household habitually turn. Let me add that ours is in no sense a collector’s library. Each book was procured because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were too much interested in their insides.
Now and then I am asked as to “what books a statesman should read,” and my answer is, poetry and novels — including short stories under the head of novels. I don’t mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke — why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value.
The same thing is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant, and of volumes like Sutherland’s “Growth of the Moral Instinct,” or Acton’s Essays and Lounsbury’s studies — here again I am not trying to class books together, or measure one by another, or enumerate one in a thousand of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in some line or other of serious thought, scientific or historical or philosophical or economic or governmental, find any number of books which are charming to read, and which in addition give that for which his or her soul hungers.
I do not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to read a great many different books of this character, just as every one else should read them. But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.
The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years.
Milton is best for one mood and Pope for another. Because a man likes Whitman or Browning or Lowell he should not feel himself debarred from Tennyson or Kipling or Korner or Heine or the Bard of the Dimbovitza. Tolstoy’s novels are good at one time and those of Sienkiewicz at another; and he is fortunate who can relish Salammbo and Tom Brown and The Two Admirals and Quentin Durward and Artemus Ward and the Ingoldsby Legends and Pickwick and Vanity Fair. Why, there are hundreds of books like these, each one of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom it happens to appeal, will enable that person quite unconsciously to furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the battle of life.
A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular time. But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir the soul at some given point of a man’s life and yet convey no message at other times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride. I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and yet it would not do me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as a matter of fact, I don’t.
I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland song through “Chevy Chase” and “Patrick Spens” and “Twa Corbies” to Scott’s poems and Longfellow’s “Saga of King Olaf” and “Othere.” On the other hand, I don’t care to read dramas as a rule; I cannot read them with enjoyment unless they appeal to me very strongly. They must almost be Aeschylus or Euripides, Goethe or Moliere, in order that I may not feel after finishing them a sense of virtuous pride in having achieved a task. Now I would be the first to deny that even the most delightful old English ballad should be put on a par with any one of scores of dramatic works by authors whom I have not mentioned; I know that each of these dramatists has written what is of more worth than the ballad; only, I enjoy the ballad, and I don’t enjoy the drama; and therefore the ballad is better for me, and this fact is not altered by the other fact that my own shortcomings are to blame in the matter. I still read a number of Scott’s novels over and over again, whereas if I finish anything by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul. But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time — and, moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner for not reading her myself.
Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of books which one person will find delightful, and which he certainly ought not to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the beloved volume. There is on our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian novel or tale called The Semi-Attached Couple. It is told with much humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; and to me it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my own family I have never met a human being who had even heard of it, and I don’t suppose I ever shall meet one. I often enjoy a story by some living author so much that I write to tell him so — or to tell her so; and at least half the time I regret my action, because it encourages the writer to believe that the public shares my views, and he then finds that the public doesn’t.

As always, the reader, thanks for listening, and there will be more to come soon.

Rescuing scraps of time from the ether and turning them into gold: how to transform the spare minutes and seconds in a day into opportunities of productive creativity.

Hello again, dear reader. During yesterday's conversation, we pontificated on the power of conversation, as seen through the eyes of CS Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien for today's conversation however, I thought we would discuss something that without which conversation wouldn't even be possible. And that of course is "time itself." I started thinking about time yesterday when I was doing some mindless web surfing (you know the kind everybody does late in the evening. When they can't think of anything more productive to do), and I kept coming across pop-up ads. That would say things like "don't miss this opportunity" or "time will run out soon." And other things to that effect, now of course I know these statements were intended to spare me to a call to action such as buying a particular product or reading a particular book. However, the statements got me thinking about time itself and how often I hear the phrase "I wish I had more time." Or "if only I had more time" these statements then got me thinking about all of the spare minutes and seconds in the course of the day that are wasted doing absolutely nothing. You know, the time I'm talking about the time spent standing in line at Starbucks to get a five dollar coffee fix or the time walking from one classroom to another during the course of a day at college or the time on the bus ride home from work. There are countless forgotten scraps of time each and every day that if harnessed and strung together could lead to something meaningful. So for today's discussion, we dear reader, are going to pontificate on where to find these golden nuggets of time, and how to put them to good use.....

Success in many of the new year’s resolutions and goals folks are now making will be predicated not just on willpower but on time. If you’re aiming to do more reading, studying, listening to podcasts, writing, stretching, exercising, journaling etc., you’ve got to find the time each day to do so.

Identifying these needed minutes and hours in what likely feels like an already packed daily schedule, with all of its slots apparently accounted for, can seem like a daunting task. From where then can these fresh resources of time be mined?

A promising first place to look are your morning and evening routines. Waking up an hour earlier every day can open a rich, quiet, wonderfully productive expanse of time that has the power to shift your life in a totally new direction. Swapping the couple hours of Netflix and mindless web surfing you typically engage in at night with the pursuit of a hobby or side hustle can be a similarly transformative move.

Beyond your mornings and your evenings, also consider what you might do with your lunch hour at work. If you eat your meal in 15 minutes, there’s much that can be accomplished in the remaining 45.

Yet, outside these larger, more obvious chunks of time, there are even more golden threads of it waiting to be discovered.

If you know where to look.

The Hidden Gold Dust of Time

“On the floor of the gold-working room, in the United States Mint at Philadelphia, there is a wooden lattice-work which is taken up when the floor is swept, and the fine particles of gold-dust, thousands of dollars’ yearly, are thus saved. So every successful man has a kind of network to catch the raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and wee bits of hours’ which most people sweep into the waste of life. He who hoards and turns to account all odd minutes, half hours, unexpected holidays, gaps ‘between times,’ and chasms of waiting for unpunctual persons, achieves results which astonish those who have not mastered this most valuable secret.” –Orison Swett Marden, Pushing to the Front, 1894

Fairly recently, I discovered a guide who helped me locate the thin-yet-powerful fragments of time that most people overlook and waste unawares. His name is Orison Swett Marden and he was a popular self-improvement writer at the turn of the 20th century. Among the fifty some odd books and booklets he penned are many inspirational gems, but one of my very favorites, and the one that has perhaps stuck with me the most, was a chapter in his Pushing to the Front entitled “Possibilities in Spare Moments.”

Possibilities in spare moments! Even the phrase seems charged with potential, and it has rolled around in my mind regularly ever since I read it, helping me to see, and seize, opportune pockets of time that I used to miss.

Marden’s argument is as simple as it is profound: “Many of the greatest men of history earned their fame outside of their regular occupations in odd bits of time which most people squander.” Not just fame could be had in these “odd bits of time,” Marden exhorted, but personal development as well.

Small slices of the clock — 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there — seem to most people to be good for nothing except staring out the window or at their phone. But just as saving a few dollars here and there slowly accrues wealth, reclaiming a few minutes each day steadily accumulates a rich storehouse of hours. As Marden declares, “Great men have ever been misers of moments” who “hoarded up [time] even to the smallest fragments!”

Where can one find these hidden threads of time in order to spin them into greater success, happiness, wisdom, and satisfaction? Scattered all about your day-to-day life once you start looking through the lens of “possibilities in spare moments.” Below, interspersed with the wisdom of Marden, I’ll point out some of the typically untapped crannies of time you may have previously overlooked — micro reservoirs of precious minutes, which, once you become fully aware of them, can be amassed into rich dividends.

Where to Find Possibilities in Spare Moments

“One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day would in ten years make an ignorant man a well-informed man…In an hour a day, a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes in a year. An hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. An hour a day might make—nay, has made—an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race.”

Active Commute

If you drive to and from work each day, you roll through some of the most valuable spare time in your schedule — provided via your stereo. Sometimes, jamming out to music is exactly what you need to get motivated or wind down, but why not swap those tunes now and again for an enlightening segment of something like the Great Courses or an edifying podcast? (If you need recommendations for good podcasts to start listening to, here are 27 of our recommendations.)

Even if you don’t have a long commute to work because you live close to the office or work from home, you likely spend at least a little time in the car each day, driving perhaps 10 minutes to the gym and back, and 10 minutes to your kid’s school and back. Add that up and you’re spending over 3 hours in your car just on the Monday-Friday stretch. Over the course of the year, that’s 7 days of your life. What are you doing with that week of time? Singing “Fight Song” and hating yourself for it, or expanding your mind with tons of new ideas that can improve your business, relationships, and understanding of culture and yourself?

Don’t feel you have to fill your commute with any kind of noise, edifying or not, either. While you drive (or walk or bike) in silence, you can mentally formulate music, or poetry, or some lines for your great American novel. The famous poet Wallace Stevens, in fact, composed his verse while he walked several miles to and from his 9-5 job at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company; when inspiration struck, he’d jot it down on the backs of envelopes he kept stuffed in his pockets.

Passive Commute

Maybe you’re a young man who doesn’t have his driver’s license yet and gets taxied around by mom and dad. Or maybe you ride the bus or subway to work each day. In such cases, you’ve got the same pocket of time as the active commuter, but, since you’re not behind the wheel of a car, you’ve got even more options on how to spend it.

Not only can you choose to swap out the music often coursing through your earbuds for a podcast, you can write down some notes on that groundbreaking novel you’ve been brainstorming. The famous, hugely prolific English novelist Anthony Trollope began his writing career that way. His job with the postal service took him on many train trips across Ireland, and he soon realized that this time could readily put him on, ahem, track towards his dream of becoming an author:

“I found that I passed in railway-carriages very many hours of my existence. Like others, I used to read—though a good friend has since told me that a man when travelling should not read, but ‘sit still and label his thoughts.’ But if I intended to make a profitable business out of my writing, and, at the same time, to do my best for the Post Office, I must turn these hours to more account than I could do even by reading. I made for myself therefore a little tablet, and found after a few days’ exercise that I could write as quickly in a railway carriage as I could at my desk. I worked with a pencil, and what I wrote my wife copied afterwards. In this way was composed the greater part of Barchester Towers and of the novel which succeeded it, and much also of others subsequent to them.”

That friends objection aside (and commutes are indeed good times to sit quietly with your thoughts), riding to/from work is really a perfect time to get some reading done. To this end, always keep the Kindle app on your phone stocked with ebooks, or stash a paperback in the glove compartment or seat pocket of your vehicular conveyance and make it your exclusive ride-along read; never take it out of the car, and read it in snatches whenever you’re its passenger. Watch and see how these short intervals of time, which used to seem like bits of nothing to you, will allow you to read several big books in a year. Books you swore you didn’t have time for.

“Some boys will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saves a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practice.”

Downtime at Work

In many jobs, there aren’t enough tasks to fill the whole workday and you end up metaphorically twiddling your thumbs. And by thumbs I mean your phone. In many such jobs, it would pay to ask your boss for other projects to take on, and to simply look for other tasks to help with. So too, in many cases, even if you don’t have enough to do, you have to pretend like you do, as your boss would frown on your engaging in a non-work-related pursuit.

There are a few jobs though where there really isn’t anything else for you to do once you’re done with your duties, and your supervisor doesn’t mind you filling this downtime time with non-disruptive personal activities. And there are cases of course where you’re the boss, and you sometimes have little pockets of time to kill — a few minutes between appointments, for example. Those few minutes don’t constitute enough time to dive into another meaty project, but they could still be put to better use than twiddling your phone.

Abraham Lincoln, for example, utilized every spare moment of his downtime to further his autodidactic education. As a boy, he always carried a book with him as he went about doing his daily chores, and would read a snatch of it whenever he could. When old Abe ran a general store in his 20s, he’d read books and study legal textbooks between visits from customers, launching him towards a career in law.

Theodore Roosevelt practiced a similar habit. He always kept a book by his elbow on his White House desk, and any time there was a spare moment between appointments and meetings, he’d read a few lines. This method, along with his ability to speed read, is how TR managed to devour several books a day, and tens of thousands over his lifetime.

Pomodoro Breaks

The Pomodoro Technique involves working for a set period of time, and then taking a rest for a set period of time. For example, you might work 25 minutes and take a 5-minute break, or work 45 minutes and take a 15-minute break.

What do you do during those breaks? The options are limitless. Surf the net (the distracting stuff that would normally get in the way of your work session). Take care of chores. Or, work on a goal in little incremental units. Read. Practice the piano or guitar. Write a quick thank you note to someone. Go over some flash cards for a foreign language you’re trying to learn. Whittle. Practice picking a lock. Throw a tomahawk. (Those latter suggestions assume you work at home; it’s not recommended that you try throwing a tomahawk down the hall and into the cubicle wall of Bob in Accounting.) Remember when you swore you didn’t have time for a hobby? Now you do.

If you’re aiming in the new year is to get stronger, more agile, and generally move your body more, Pomodoro breaks are the perfect time to achieve those goals too. “Grease the groove” and bust out some push-ups and pull-ups. Practice your posture. Perform some of the stretches that undo the damage of sitting. One of my goals is to stay limber, so I often use my break to do some MovNat stuff — crawling, stretching, balancing on a 2X4 in my living room, etc.

Working Out

When you’re doing an intense workout, listening to music that gets your blood pumping and your thumos inflamed is really the way to go. But for a slower, longer workout, like a long distance run, it’s easy to tune into a podcast and watch the miles fade away.

When I’m lifting weights, I sometimes read little snatches of books during my rests between sets. So at a given time, I might be reading the philosophy of Plato while hoisting a barbell. Gentleman barbarian style, baby!

“Time is money. We should not be stingy or mean with it, but we should not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away a dollar-bill. Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities which will never come back. Beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in it.”

Waiting in Line

Perhaps your favorite hip coffee shop always requires a 5-minute wait to get up to the counter, and a 5-minute wait to get your joe. Why not sneak in a bit of reading during this daily downtime? Or even studying. When I was in law school I used to carry a pack of flashcards with me wherever I went, and would look at them while I waited in line for lunch.

Remember: while little pockets of time don’t seem like much individually, they really accumulate. Ten minutes every day for a year adds up to more than 30 hours. If you’re committed to the pursuit of learning as much as possible and becoming the best man you can be, do you really have 60 hours a year, 25 full days each decade, to throw away?

“The days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return. Each successive morning new gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and utilize them is exhausted. Wisely was it said that lost wealth may be regained by industry and economy, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance and medicine, but lost time is gone forever.”

Waiting for an Appointment (Or a Perennially Late Friend!)

We all hope that when we arrive at the doctor, or the dentist, or the DMV, we’ll register for our appointment, put our name on the waiting list, and be swept right in. Yet, we all also know that this isn’t unfortunately always, or even often, what happens. Instead, we’re stuck cooling our heels in the waiting room for 20, 40 minutes, and end up reading an issue of Sports Illustrated from 2011 or scrolling through Instagram to pass the time.

Instead of wasting this fragment of valuable time, read something really good you’ve been meaning to get to, but have felt too busy to engage. A classic novel. A meaty blog post.

Or use the time to catch up with friends. Not with a cursory comment on their Facebook page, but by writing them an actual email. With multiple paragraphs.

The habit of always keeping books on your phone or a paperback in your pocket comes in handy in another scenario as well: when you often find yourself waiting for a perennially late friend or significant other. While these times used to annoy you and be filled with the texting of pointed queries as to their whereabouts and ETA, they can now be something you practically look forward to — your personal reading time.

“‘Oh, it’s only five minutes or ten minutes till mealtime; there’s no time to do anything now,’ is one of the commonest expressions heard in the family. But what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragments of time which many of us throw away! The very hours you have wasted, if improved, might have insured your success.”

Waiting for…Anything!

The number of times one finds himself waiting throughout the day are many and cannot all be neatly categorized. Waiting for your computer to boot up, for a file to download, for the coffee to brew, for your frozen dinner to finish cooking…these are all times you likely stare at the numbers ticking down on the microwave or start scrolling through your phone. If so desired, they could be put to more productive and edifying use.

That use includes following Carlyle’s advice of simply being still and sorting through your thoughts; you don’t have to be actively “doing” something to take advantage of the possibilities in spare moments. Great men always keep the motors of their minds running during the brief “interstices” of their day. “Under my tent in the fiercest struggle of war,” Julius Caesar declared, “I have always found time to think of many other things.” Director Woody Allen has said “I think in the cracks all the time. I never stop.” And author Umberto Eco told a journalist who visited his apartment:

“This morning you rang, but then you had to wait for the elevator, and several seconds elapsed before you showed up at the door. During those seconds, waiting for you, I was thinking of this new piece I’m writing. I can work in the water closet, in the train. While swimming I produce a lot of things, especially in the sea. Less so in the bathtub, but there too.”

You can likewise choose to mentally chew on an idea rather than mindlessly skimming through your Instagram feed. Just be sure to always carry a pocket notebook with you, should that short session of contemplation issue an insight.

And, truth be told, there’s even benefit of designating some of your spare moments to purely pleasurable phone use. Rather than scratching the itch whenever it strikes, you can create a “rule” like: “I get to check my phone whenever I’m waiting for the microwave/the first five minutes of riding the subway/etc.”

Once you start looking for them, you’ll find possibilities in spare moments everywhere. You never know when you’re going to find yourself in a holding pattern, and you can either throw away those minutes forever or spin their golden threads into the fabric of personal progress. Prepare to not just seize the day, but to seize every moment, by keeping books and podcasts loaded on your phone, pen and paper in pocket, and a vision of the man you want to become ever before you.

“The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will. Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour. The man is yet unborn who rightly measures and fully realizes the value of an hour. As Fénelon says, God (or whatever deity you prefer or even the universe itself) never gives but one moment at a time, and does not give a second until he withdraws the first.”

As always, your reader, thanks for listening and there will be more to come soon.

The power of conversation as demonstrated by CS Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: life lessons that can be learned from a conversation between two outstanding authors.

Hello again to reader. Now I know recently we've been pontificating on the importance of finding identity as an individual. How to maintain a positive attitude and how to avoid excessive screen time and connect with humanity at large, and we have also talked about the importance of quality communication skills, and other leadership skills, and we have even talked about the importance of conversation in previous discussions. However, today, I thought we would discuss the power of conversation, as seen through the eyes of CS Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. I came across this very interesting study on doing some research concerning how the languages in J.R.R. Tolkien's middle Earth universe were created. And after reading this interesting analysis of the power of conversation, I thought it would make the perfect addition to our conversation about living the best life possible. It should be noted to reader that I did not personally conduct any of the research for this conversation and the words exchanged by CS Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have not been paraphrased or altered by me in any way. And neither has the analysis following the conversation. I simply provided a context for the lessons that can be learned from this very intriguing conversation. And so the reader, I hope by the end of this discussion you will better understand the power of conversation. And why this power should never be underestimated....        

This is the evening of September 19, 1931.

Three men stroll down Addison’s Walk, a picturesque footpath that runs along the River Cherwell on the grounds of Oxford’s Magdalen College. Two of the men — C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — are particularly engaged with one another, deep inside an animated discussion on the nature of metaphor and myth.

While both men are 30-something war veterans, teach and lecture at Oxford colleges, and share a love of old literature, the two friends are in many ways a study in contrasts. Lewis has a ruddy complexion and thickly set build. His clothes are loose and shabby. His voice booms as he speaks. Tolkien is slender, dresses nattily, and speaks elusively. Lewis is more brash; Tolkien more reserved.

Besides differences in personality, the men are divided by something more fundamental: Tolkien has been a faithful Catholic since childhood, while Lewis has been a committed atheist since the age of 15.

Over the last few years, however, Lewis’ position on God has slowly been softening, partly due to his friendship with Tolkien and the many conversations they’ve had since first meeting five years ago. The two academics — Tolkien a Professor of Anglo-Saxon; Lewis a Fellow and Tutor of English Literature — initially bonded over a shared love of what Lewis calls “Northerness” — an almost visceral pang of longing for the epic, heroic, gray-filtered world described in Norse mythology.

At times the men have stayed up until the early hours of the morning, “discoursing of the gods and giants and Asgard.” Lewis has often shared with Tolkien his affinity for Baldr — the Norse god of love and peace, forgiveness and justice — who is wrongly killed but comes back to life after Ragnarok (a kind of Viking apocalypse). He has told his friend that he feels “mysteriously moved” by such stories of sacrifice, death, and resurrection.

A love of mythology may have brought the friends together, but it has also served as one of Lewis’ major stumbling blocks to embracing Christianity. As a young man he had decided that the faith was simply “one mythology among many,” and was just as fabricated as all the rest: “All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man’s own invention — Christ as much as Loki.”

Yet as much as Lewis wished to hold onto this position, he couldn’t shake the sense that it felt like a stiff and confining set of clothes — that he had stubbornly been keeping something at bay he wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t want to embrace. Despite his best defenses, he felt a prodding within, and believed it was God himself who was actively hunting him like a deer; “I never had the experience of looking for God,” he later said. “It was the other way round.”

If God was indeed “stalking” Lewis, this pursuit often took the form of conversations with his friends — not only Tolkien, but other bright scholars who saw no contradiction between their intellectualism and their faith. They challenged Lewis’ conviction that the head and the heart could not be combined, peppered him with searching questions he struggled to answer to his satisfaction, and ultimately set him off on a journey to see if rational underpinnings for theism could be found.

Much to Lewis’ dismay, his project was a success. Though he did not want to acknowledge the existence of God, did not want “to go back to the bondage of believing in any old (and already decaying) superstition,” and wished not to be “interfered with” by Deity or anyone else, he found that, to his mind, the evidence indeed pointed to there being some kind of higher power in the universe. And so in 1929, he knelt down, “admitted that God was God,” and became the “most reluctant convert in all of England.”

To Lewis it was a purely rational decision, and while he became a theist that night, his belief did not extend beyond an unknown, impersonal God into a faith in Christ specifically. It would take two more years, and one transformative conversation begun along Addison’s Walk, for him to make that leap.

Lewis takes that walk not only with Tolkien, but also Hugo Dyson, who teaches English at Reading University and is, like Tolkien, a committed Christian. Amidst a swirl of leaves a warm wind has dislodged from the trees, Lewis lays out his remaining obstacle to embracing his friends’ faith. He tells them that he can conceive of Christ as an ultimate exemplar in how to live a virtuous life, but that he struggles with the whole idea of his enacting an atonement that saves mankind. He couldn’t see “how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) 2,000 years ago could help us here and now.” Phrases like “sacrifice” and “the Blood of the Lamb,” seem to Lewis to be “either silly or shocking.”

Tolkien and Dyson listen to their friend’s concerns, and decide to retire to Lewis’ lodgings at the college to continue the discussion. The men settle themselves in Lewis’ room and take out their pipes. As the clock ticks past midnight, and the room fills with curls of smoke, both Dyson and Tolkien share insights from their own journey to faith. But it is Tolkien’s arguments that will ultimately hold the most sway. The professor unfolds to Lewis a different way of looking at the centerpiece of the Christian gospels — one that ironically embraces, rather than flees from, the idea of it being a myth.

Myths, Tolkien explains, are not fairy tales, intentional lies, or mere fabrications, but are instead powerful vehicles for revealing the world’s deepest truths. All myths, he argues, illuminate layers and dimensions of existence that are often missed by our narrow human vision. In this way, they can actually be more “real” than what we normally call reality. Tolkien posits that mythmakers exercise a God-given power, and act as “sub-creators” who share pieces of the ultimate Truth that is hidden from plain sight. All the world’s myths then serve as prisms through which we can see fragments of divine light. Stories, Tolkien argues, are sacramental.

Lewis has gone from believing that Christianity is a myth that is false like all other myths, to feeling that he must think Christianity is a true religion, wholly different from the false world of mythology. Tolkien suggests another perspective: that all myths reflect “a splintered fragment of the true light,” and that Christianity is a “true myth” that encompasses and expands on all the rest. That is, while God had formerly used the poetic images and traditions of other cultures to express himself, Christ had come in real historical time to live out a story that actually happened.

Yet, Tolkien challenges his friend, the Christian story of atonement and resurrection should still be approached just as Lewis had the Norse tales of gods like Baldr — allowing the story to deeply and mysteriously move him. Like all myths, the true myth of Christ was not to be grasped mechanistically, as a literal description of things that had happened, but imaginatively, for its meaning. The Christian myth was true not in the sense of revealing the actual nature of God, and how exactly mankind had been redeemed, which finite minds could not possibly comprehend; it was true in the sense that the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection composed the best vehicle — the best narrative — by which the human mind could be illuminated and catch a glimpse of the deeper structure underlying the eternities.

Lewis’ pilgrimage to faith had been a long one, in which intellectual barriers gradually fell away and pieces of insight slowly fell into place. But there remained one jumble still to untangle. All his life, Lewis has felt the tug of two seemingly contradictory impulses: one, a deep, unsatisfied longing for beauty and joy, and two, the desire to make sense of the world rationally. As Tolkien speaks, Lewis realizes that these two inclinations needn’t be at odds, and can in fact be reconciled. He sees that faith can be the greatest catalyst for imagination, and that imagination can conceive of a reality more real than that which can be discovered by clinical observation alone. A new possibility opens to Lewis: one in which he can bring his entire self to the Christian faith — mind and heart, intellect and intuition. It is a transformative, revelatory moment.

Lewis continued to talk with Tolkien and Dyson until three in the morning. And as he continued to turn over their conversation in the days that followed, his belief in the Passion story grew, until he could write to a friend on October 1: “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ — in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it.”

Lewis has not only passed on from theism but to a wholly new path for his life. He is destined to become the most famous Christian apologist of his time, the creator of his own illuminating myths in the form of the Narnia series, and a writer whose works continue to be discovered and prized today. A single conversation begun on Addison’s Walk turned out to be something like a railroad switch — diverting Lewis from the track he was on, and sending him in a completely new direction.

Reviving the Power of Conversation: What We Can Learn from Lewis and Tolkien

I share the story of this singular conversation between Lewis and Tolkien not because I think everyone will agree with the conclusions they reached, but because it is, if you will, a “true myth” — a story that illuminates truths which transcend the concrete who/what/where details of the narrative itself and give us a glimpse of the deeper structure of things. In this case, the story reveals the potentially transformative power of face-to-face conversation, and hopefully gets us to reflect on whether the full strength and beauty of that power is endangered in our tech-filled world.

In her book, Reclaiming Conversation, MIT professor Sherry Turkle documents the woeful evidence that we moderns are increasingly fleeing from “conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, conversation in which we play with ideas.” We hide behind screens, and communicate as much as possible through email and text. We justify these moves on the basis of efficiency, and the fact that in having the ability to edit our messages, we can be more “ourselves” and make sure we say things “just right.”

But much is lost in this retreat from in-the-flesh interaction. Tech-mediated communication may make conversation more efficient, but it also makes it more superficial. It shrivels our empathy and feeling of true connection — states that are predicated on our being able to hear each other’s voices, read each other’s body language, and see each other’s facial expressions. We not only lose out on insights into the lives of others, but into our own as well.

Good conversation is a precious gift we should not relinquish to our devices. To revive its transformative power, one must intentionally cultivate the following elements:

Time. Good conversation does not operate on the principle of efficiency. It needs to be open-ended — without chronological parameters or set agenda. And it doesn’t have to take a completely smooth course. Oftentimes we cut a conversation short because there’s an awkward pause, or a seeming lull, or because people are repeating themselves. Yet such things are perfectly natural; are we to suppose that Lewis, Dyson, and Tolkien talked for eight or so hours, without there being a single lull? Very doubtful! Sometimes silences become important pivot points to a new, fruitful stream of discussion. And good conversation often goes over the same things a few times, going deeper on the second pass, with a fresh realization emerging on the third.

Instead of running away when conversations hit a snag, give them a chance to unfold.

Space. You may have heard of the famous “Inklings” — an informal club and literary society to which Lewis and Tolkien, as well as several other writers, belonged. Members of the Inklings would meet on Thursday evenings at Lewis’ lodgings at Magdalen College, and the Eagle and Child pub at midday on Tuesdays, to drink, smoke their pipes, and read each other their latest works. It was a wonderful mastermind group, in which the men could encourage each other and offer feedback on their writing. And yet it was hardly the only such group that the members belonged to! Both Lewis and Tolkien attended numerous other such discussion groups throughout their lives. It was in fact in one such group, the Coalbiters (from the Icelandic kolbítar, or those who sit so close to the fire they can practically bite the coal), that Lewis and Tolkien first solidified their bond through the reading of Icelandic poetry and the discussion of Norse mythology.

Good conversation need not only be had in semi-formal clubs and groups, but it often does take some deliberation in regularly getting together with folks.

Sustained attention. As Turkle notes: “Studies show that the mere presence of a phone on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence.” Would Lewis’ conversation with Dyson and Tolkien ever have gotten off the ground if his friends kept intermittently putting their heads down to check their phones? If each kept looking up and saying, “Wait, what?”

Good conversation is a cooperative effort, in which each participant must be all-in; rather than dropping in and out of a conversation, each must offer sustained attention, actively listening to his companions so that he might make contributions that build on the insights of others. Because good conversation also requires:

Collaboration. The way we communicate through text and social media has shaped the way we now interact face-to-face: we say something, and then sit back and wait for the responses to come in. Everyone offers an isolated, disparate reply; we talk around each other, rather than with each other.

But good conversations are kinetic and collaborative — they are much like pieces of symphonic music where everyone must contribute to the harmony and rhythm and meld their notes together. Sometimes you have a latent insight you don’t even know you have, and can’t articulate, and then someone says something that unearths it and you feel a light bulb go off in your head. Sometimes you have a fragment of an idea that you can’t fully make sense of; then when you share it, someone else makes a connection you hadn’t thought of and builds on it, and the whole group gets to enjoy the newly birthed insight. When it works, conversation can be an incredibly creative endeavor.

For it to work, good conversation actually requires that its participants spend time by themselves:

Solitude and self-reflection. In Reclaiming Conversation, Turkle argues that while it may seem ironic, good conversation requires solitude. In order to have anything to bring to a discussion with friends, you need to have been reflecting on things on your own. Then when you get together and share what you’ve been thinking about, they can build on your insights, in turn giving you more to chew on the next time you’re by yourself. This creates a “virtuous circle” where “alone we prepare to talk together,” and “together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.”

By solitude, Turkle has in mind not only being detached from others, but disconnected from our devices as well. Unfortunately, many today cannot handle this degree of aloneness, and must constantly distract themselves with their devices. This in turn transforms the virtuous circle into a vicious one:

“Afraid of being alone, we struggle to pay attention to ourselves. And what suffers is our ability to pay attention to each other. If we can’t find our own center, we lose confidence in what we have to offer others.

Or you can work the circle the other way. We struggle to pay attention to each other, and what suffers is our ability to know ourselves.”

After Lewis’ conversion to theism, he had begun attending Magdalen’s college chapel on weekdays, and an Anglican parish church on Sundays — not because he was committed to the Christian faith, but simply as a time for contemplation. He had also begun studying the gospels, particularly the book of John, in the original Greek. Thus, by the time of the stroll down Addison’s Walk, he had something he could bring to the conversation — he could articulate to his friends the thoughts he was struggling with, and their own times of solitary reflection allowed them to help him grapple with these ideas. Solitude had prepared the way for collaborative conversation.

Appreciation of differences. In her research on the nature of modern conversation, Turkle found that many people today shy away from talking with those they disagree with. They don’t like the conflict, they don’t like having their beliefs challenged, and they’d rather stick to interacting with people who merely confirm their preconceived notions.

But some of the best conversations are civil debates on important ideas and issues. During Lewis’ journey of conversion, he half-lamented, half-rejoiced that “Everything that I had labored so hard to expel from my own life seemed to have flared up and met me in my best friends.” While the conversations he had with his Christian associates frustrated him at times, he enjoyed the challenge, and the ways such discussions caused him to dig deeper into his own beliefs and reflect on whether they were sufficiently supported.

So it is with us: by engaging with those with whom we disagree, we end up growing and examining our own ideas more closely, even if we don’t ultimately change our minds.

Regularity. To say that a single conversation changed C.S. Lewis’ life is both true, and a misrepresentation. The conversation he had with Tolkien did indeed transform his whole outlook on Christianity, but it was a conversation that wouldn’t have been possible if not for all the discussions the two men had previously enjoyed over the years.

Tolkien would stop by Magdalen College to see Lewis nearly every Monday morning. Together they’d have a drink and discuss everything from literature to the gossip of faculty politics. Sometimes they’d just play with puns and trade bawdy jokes. Not every conversation was profound. But through these casual chats they built a bond where deep discussions could become possible.

These days, you often hear people say they hate small talk and find casual conversations boring. With the impatience born of the digital age, they want to skip right to the big stuff. But as Turkle puts it so well:

“You really don’t know when you are going to have an important conversation. You have to show up for many conversations that feel inefficient or boring to be there for the conversation that changes your mind.”

Conclusion: Recapture the Magic of Conversation

Some of the most memorable moments of our lives revolve around our conversations: the conversation you had with your girlfriend when you both realized you were falling in love; the conversation you had with a mentor who helped crystallize what vocation to pursue; the conversation you had with your daughter when you realized she had truly become an adult.

Face-to-face conversations can be entertaining, edifying, and all-around soul satisfying. They can be opportunities for both learning and mentorship. They can help you discover things about others and about yourself that would have otherwise remained hidden. They can spark transformative realizations, even revelations; they can bring you back to yourself. Lewis evocatively sums up the joys of conversation:

“Those are the golden sessions … when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life — natural life — has no better gift to give.”

Magical, even life-changing things can happen when you choose to enter into conversation — when you choose spontaneity over editing and efficiency. But it is paradoxically spontaneity that one must intentionally seek and ready oneself for.

As always, dear reader, thanks for listening and there will be more to come soon.