God rest his soul. I am sorry; suicide hits hard; harder when close to home. One cannot truly know what another's internal world is like, if they don't want you to know. We are all actors.
Thank you for reminding me to put that book on my list. The list is so long. I didn't read for several years when I was raising kids and working full time. Too exhausted at night and free time was spent engaging with friends and family. There are a million worthy things one can do that don't involve reading. One has to love it or it isn't a priority. I know many who simply aren't good readers; it doesn't do for them what it does for me. I learn best through words on paper, for example. Some learn more visually, through images on a screen. I missed it, though, for sure. I prefer reading to almost any other activity. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : In my local Starbucks this evening I asked one of the staff where one of the regular customers had gone. Peter - a Scot who was there almost every night - was always very boisterous and friendly so his absence was noticeable. I was expecting to be told that he had decided to move back to Edinburgh. Instead I learned that he'd killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train at Ealing Broadway station (right next door to the Starbucks). Naturally enough I was thunderstruck. You then start to think if you had been as welcoming to him as maybe you should have been. We all owe each other a certain acknowledgment and respect and I was thinking back to my own nodded greetings and occasional exchanges with Peter and judging that perhaps I'd fallen short of giving him his due. R.I.P. Anyway, there was a staff member I'd noticed who always struck me as being a bright young chap. I thought that maybe he was one of those over-qualified graduates one reads about who are so desperate for work experience that cleaning up at a coffee shop has people queuing up around the block whenever a vacancy arises. Tonight I'd been sitting there reading Sam Harris's Waking Up (many thanks to those FFLifers who recommended the title - I'd probably not have bought it without your thumbs up). This staffer said to me that it seemed an interesting topic - "Spirituality without Religion". What was it about? So I summed it up by saying that Sam Harris was hostile to religion - and I mean really hostile - but he approved of meditation and wanted to encourage its use while ditching all the metaphysical baggage. My staffer then responded by saying that he never read books. I tell you that his reply was more shocking to me than the news of Peter's suicide. It really hit me that someone who never reads books must have an overall view of life utterly remote from my own. How can an obviously bright and personable young man have gone through our educational system and ended up deciding that books have nothing worthwhile for him? Imagine what it must be like to have your worldview formed by television, the internet and your friends' chat. What a confined space you must live in.
