Maturation

School, work, responsibility—it all sucks away your soul.  As a child, I could read for days on end.  On Christmas, birthdays, any holiday you can think of, my favorite present was always the newest installment of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” or whatever series had most recently tickled my fancy.  My dad built a special bookshelf for my room to hold the hundreds of books I’d collected over the years…I had way more books than friends, to be honest! But I wasn’t upset.  Life was good, and I was happy!

However, as I grew taller, my responsibilities began to grow as well, and my time spent with the books began to shrink.

  I started to see my old friends with sadness and wished that I had the time to curl up with then and lose myself as I once did. Their dog-eared pages waved mournfully in my direction, beckoning me to return to the good times, and oh how I longed to follow their call!

Soon, my despair was remedied.  As I entered college as an English major, I began to receive assignments that had nothing to do with algebra or chemistry and everything to do with my favorite past time—reading!  In my British Literature class that I took last semester, I was introduced to a couple works that I hadn’t previously heard of, and they rekindled the love that had grown faint under the suffocation of responsibility. 

One author in particular, George Herbert, wrote a poem that I think about probably every day.  It’s titled Love (III) and goes like this:

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                             From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                             If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                             Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                             I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                             Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                             Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                             My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

When I read this poem out of my battered, rented copy of the Norton Anthology, I felt an immediate connection to it.  I sat an analyzed the poem over and over again, trying to figure out who exactly “Love” was, and if I recognized him or her in my own life.  I grabbed a notebook and pen and re-wrote the poem, trying out the feel of the words in my hands and deeply considering the meaning of each one as it flowed out of the ink and onto my own notebook paper.  My mom didn’t quite give me the reaction that I’d hoped for when I shared the poem with her.  She responded “Oh, that’s pretty,” and for some reason I found myself feeling slighted and mildly irritated.  This poem spoke to my soul and expressed the words that I didn’t know I wanted to say, and she just didn’t get it.  But in the end, that didn’t matter.  What mattered was that I had found a new friend.

My “literary life” has developed and adapted over the years as I’ve allowed.  Instead of having fleeting, superficial relationships with books and stories, I’ve begun to create deep and meaningful connections with works.  They stay with me, even change me.  Literature gives me life.