If I Had One Wish
If I had one wish, what would I wish for? I would wish for a chip with all the world’s knowledge on it to be inserted into and understood by my brain. Perhaps that is something already being worked on by Elon Musk’s team. But I clearly remember one of the most frustrating days in high school was understanding that I could not know everything. For some reason, I believe I had this realization in the girls’ bathroom. Having struggled in my honors math and science classes, when I found them so fascinating, made me downright angry. Why did the concepts not come to me as quickly as to my friends? Not only did I want to be good at these subjects, but I wanted to have read all the books out there in the world for my literature and history classes.
However, just go ask ChatGPT how long it would take to read every book ever written and you’ll get something like over 300,000 years, if no new books were written (and, apparently, 2.2 million new books are written every year. It would be an impossible feat for a human being today. Clearly, I understand that many books are not worth reading, but with each book comes a certain level of clarity from just seeing through another’s perspective for a few hours.
I even used ChatGPT to go over the themes I am reading right now and how long it would take me to complete my current list. It happens to be about four years if I read for two hours a day, minus Sundays, by the way. I am only delving into parenting, longevity, eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century cooking, eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century etiquette, and literary classics. My list of books right now is up to 440.
Of course, the more books I read, the more books they connect me to and I add to my personal list. It seems to be a never-ending cycle that eats up a lot of my time. Yet, it’s one of the best ways to “fill up my well” until it overflows onto the page in words. Writers read. It’s what we do. But I can’t shake this agonizing feeling that I’m always falling behind in my work. There is so much to uncover between each page, but I have to eat, sleep, work, and now take care of my one-year-old daughter while keeping my marriage healthy and happy at the same time.
Perhaps this season of life is not meant to be one where my head is stuck behind the pages of a book. I keep telling myself that those long days of hard concentration will come quicker than I realize. I must cherish these moments that are fleeting with my child. To walk on the balance beam takes resilience, patience, and a running mantra in my mind to stay the course. So I will wait for the knowledge to come to me in the form of a chip. I will work to try to achieve Bryan Johnson’s vision of “Don’t Die” in order to live long enough to at least read the greatest of words ever written on the page. (For those who are not already convinced that I am a nerd, I put together a list of classics from the back of an AP Literature textbook and the Barnes & Noble Classics section, and I have read almost every single one of those already). But for now, I must be selective in my focus and guard my time as my most precious commodity. That time is what makes the reader into a writer who has lived a thousand lives.
Views Expressed Disclaimer: Please know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand's philosophy visit: aynrand.org.