In Fahrenheit 451, Faber, the ex-English professor and community pariah, laid out three reasons why books are important.

  1. Quality of information.

    The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

  2. Leisure to digest it.

    (TV) tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, “What nonsense!”

    You play God to (a book). Books can be beaten down with reason.

  3. The right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.

With the wealth of material on the Internet, quality reading is not hard to find. Time to think, which I’m not able to do at leisure, is still an improvement from the past. And, fomenting change also seems more possible with e-mails or other online activity. Most importantly, none of these are off limits to me as an expat stay-at-home-mom.

To my surprise, I have more time to think broadly now than ever before. When I was still in school or at work, I was usually too busy crunching numbers, meeting deadlines, and goofing off with friends. Also, with age and the enriching experience of being a wife and mother, I think differently than before.

Nowadays, the best times for me to think are usually when I’m involved in many of the mind-numbing tasks of caring for Stephen – reading the same Dr. Seuss book aloud for the bazillionth time in a row, watching over Stephen playing in the bathtub, or lying next to him as he drops off to slumberland. I wouldn’t have expected that spending time with Stephen would actually encourage me to think instead of shutting my brain off.

When do you find the time to think?

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