At the heart of the book Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer, is a philosophical problem. Coincidentally, it’s the same philosophical problem I encountered earlier this year, when deciding whether to travel to London and Paris.

Revelations

In 1984, as Krakauer explains, brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty worked together to murder another brother’s wife and daughter. They took this action because Ron had received a revelation. He had been taking a class on how to receive revelations from God. He typed out the revelations he received. One of them focused on the importance of murdering several people, among them the two that were soon murdered by him and his brother.

The philosophical problem is this. When you get very silent and pay attention to your mind, or when you pray and listen for a response, or when you wake from an interesting dream, you may receive a revelation. The secular definition of revelation on dictionary.com is “something revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized.” Call it the unconscious mind, or call it a god or spirit, or call it the dream world—it’s all the same thing. Perhaps the revelation appears in your mind due to the workings of a higher power, or perhaps it’s a biological process, or perhaps it’s both. In any case, you receive a new perspective on the world and your duties in it, one heretofore unfamiliar to your conscious mind. If you receive a revelation, take it seriously, and act upon it, does that mean you are crazy?

Dreams

I wrote about some of my experiences with dreams in this post about profound dreams that taught me something new about myself. I argued that dreams are worth listening to because, to quote myself, “the unconscious mind often has access to knowledge that the conscious mind does not.”

I elaborated on this topic in this more recent post on a dream about traveling to London and Paris and my decision to act upon that dream. Somehow, as I explained in this post, my unconscious mind synthesized a great deal of information, which meanwhile my conscious mind had not yet synthesized, and presented to me in a dream an unexpectedly original and fascinating idea. Upon waking, I realized that events in my life had aligned. It the perfect year for me to travel solo to Europe. (Under the Banner of Heaven was the book I referred to in that post: the one I finished on the airplane to London.)

The Philosophical Problem

This brings me back to our philosophical problem. Is there any difference between me listening to a particularly powerful dream and acting upon it (thereby vacationing in Europe), and Ron Lafferty listening to a revelation from God and acting upon it (thereby murdering two people)? Here’s how Krakauer presents the problem:

“If Ron Lafferty were declared mentally ill because he obeyed the voice of his God, isn’t everyone who believes in God and seeks guidance through prayer mentally ill as well?”

I would add to that everyone who meditates and dreams and uses insights gained therefrom to navigate their lives.

The conclusion that Krakauer and other experts came to is no, Ron Lafferty is not mentally ill . . . with the possible exception of him exhibiting a diagnosable case of narcissistic personality disorder. However, as Krakauer explains, a large percentage of the population could be properly diagnosed in this way—many of them highly successful in their careers, and the vast majority of them not murderers.

So where did the Lafferty brothers go wrong?

Decisions

I’m going to have to go beyond the analysis in Under the Banner of Heaven to answer this question, because Krakauer leaves the final analysis and judgment up to the reader. But here’s what I think.

If you receive a revelation—no matter whether through meditation, prayer, or dreaming, and no matter whether you attribute it to a higher power or to your unconscious mind—remember that it is just an idea. A revelation is a creative synthesis of a lot of different facts that you are aware of, but have not yet synthesized consciously. It is a new way of looking upon your world and your future.

Your job at that point, as a conscious, thinking individual, is to make a judgement call about that idea. It’s a new idea! It opens up possibilities that you had not seen before! But not every possibility can or should be realized. Some possibilities are not practical, and some possibilities are downright horrific.

And the truth is, revelations can always be interpreted in multiple ways. Your job is not to try to guess, like a slave, what some hidden master wants to passive-aggressively communicate to you, so that you won’t be beaten hereafter. No. Your job is to assess the revelation like you would assess any other idea that you happen to come up with, or that someone else happens to share with you. You can choose to take the idea and live it out in full, or you can choose to change the idea and do something similar yet different, or you can choose to ignore the idea entirely. But the important thing is that you are in control, thinking about the consequences of your actions, and hopefully always striving to make the world a better place.

I am thinking now of the saying “God helps those who help themselves.” There is no instruction manual for life. Not even the most scientific or holy books can tell you what to wear tomorrow evening and whom to meet for dinner. No revelation can tell you that, either.

But books and revelations can give you ideas. And you, with all the power of your conscious mind, can assess those ideas and make the best decisions you can.

While I was preparing to travel to Europe and actually traveling, I did not try to recreate everything that happened in my dream. That would have been ridiculous and probably impossible, and I would have had a miserable time! Instead, I took ideas from my dream that I liked and discarded the rest. In fact, most ideas I gain from dreams I discard immediately. It’s only occasionally that a really good idea comes to me in a dream.

So it’s not crazy to listen to revelations that you receive. What’s crazy—or at least deeply unwise—is to abdicate your natural-born decision-making abilities.

Have you stumbled across any original ideas lately? What do you think of them?

While I was overseas, the architect who designed the Louvre’s crystal pyramid, I.M. Pei, died at the age of 102. I went to the Louvre myself a few days later. It was a Saturday afternoon, and there was a long line angling past the upside-down pyramid within the underground shopping plaza. Visitors to the Louvre must pass through a security checkpoint before entering the large foyer. There, they can stand in another long line to buy a ticket if, like me, they did not have the foresight to purchase one online beforehand.

Halfway through my visit, after wandering through many large halls filled with renaissance and early and ancient and otherwise freakin’ old art, climbing up and down huge stairwells, and feeling lost and overwhelmed, I came across a window to the outdoors and snapped the photo above. It was raining quite hard. These two old robed figures were standing out there, getting wet, while keeping watch over the right-side-up pyramid. One of them even had a hand raised toward it in praise, or in happiness, or maybe because he just couldn’t help it.

But the main artwork I was in that vast building to see was not these two friends, nor even the pyramid, but rather Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. She is in her own, private room. To get to her, one must follow many signs, leading up stairways and through huge galleries. Finally, one happens across several other Da Vinci paintings. A sizeable group of people is often hovering around these; but soon they move on, and one is able to enjoy these paintings up close and personal.

Across the hallway is a cordoned-off section where one can stand in line to see Mona Lisa herself. Once entering the room, one can push through a huge crowd for five or ten minutes, taking care to safeguard one’s personal belongings, until one finally reaches the front of the crowd. Then, one can lean against the security belt and peer, in awe and astonishment, at the masterpiece, as she gazes back at you. You can stare at her and study her and be with her and enjoy looking at her for as long as the guards let you, which is generally only a few minutes.

At least, this is what I did upon reaching the security belt at the front of the crowd. Here’s what everyone else was doing:

Strangely, only a small percentage of the people here seem to be intently focused on experiencing the masterpiece before them. Many more are focused on taking photos of said masterpiece. This I struggle to understand. If I wanted a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, that is easily had. They are plastered all over the Louvre gift shops, indeed all over Paris—indeed all over the world. More probably, these folks wanted to share with their friends, on social media or elsewhere, the fact that they experienced the masterpiece in person. This is fine and wonderful and good: in fact, I am doing the same thing, right now!

The only problem is, they didn’t experience the masterpiece in person. The act of taking a close-up photo of the thing inhibits one from actually experiencing the thing, since your time before it is limited. But perhaps all these people already experienced it! Perhaps they already drank it in fully, and then got back in line and pushed through the crowd a second time, to take a photo. Do you think that’s what they did? This must’ve been what they all did. Yes? Right? No? Sigh. But since I wrote about this topic (direct experience of the real world vs. staying inside your own head) in this blog post about Matthew B. Crawford’s book The World Beyond Your Head, let’s move on to what I myself experienced.

I was amazed by the Da Vinci paintings in the hallway. I had seen reproductions of these in my art history class in college. I had a professor with a thick Italian accent who kept saying “I want you to understand.” Over and over she said this. But I never quite understood. Seeing the paintings in person, decades later, however? I understand now.

The people in the Da Vinci paintings pop out as real . . . unlike every other painting I saw that day (I must note that I did not see every painting in the Louvre, just a whole lot of them). More than this, they have expressions on their faces that convey serenity, confidence, and inner wisdom. You feel as though you are in the presence of someone who knows, who understands, but who isn’t necessarily telling. The paintings in the hallway have religious themes. Thus, they seem to express the divinity of God: the all-knowing, omnipresent One.

But our friend Mona Lisa is secular. This makes her expression particularly astounding. My thoughts upon first entering that packed room, all those bodies crowding up to get a glimpse of her, were as follows:

“How is she handling all of this attention? Is this gawking at a woman really appropriate in this #metoo era in which we live? If I were her, I would not enjoy being stared at, photographed, hashtagged, as if by predators, or paparazzi, or teenage groupies, all day long!”

But upon finally catching a glimpse of her, I realized that she has more than enough mental resources to endure any amount of gawking. Like the Virgin, Baby, Baptist, Angel, and others in the hallway, she was expressing serenity, confidence, and inner wisdom. However—and this is key, and elemental, and why our dear Mona Lisa is considered, above all, enigmatic—she was doing this without the benefit of being divinely appointed and consecrated by God. How is it possible for a person be so calmly in charge of herself, particularly a woman living in paternalistic times, particularly an ordinary, secular, workaday citizen?

She is an inspiration to us all.

Did you, by chance, have an unconventional childhood? I suppose we all did, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent.

I’d like to tell you about an international bestseller, now available in English, about a boy who’s having an adorably wacky childhood, due to his adorably wacky parents. Here’s a passage from the book describing one of the many unusual aspects of the boy’s home:

“In one corner of the hall, there was a mountain of mail that my parents had tossed on the floor unopened. The mountain was so huge that I could toss myself onto it without getting hurt. Warm and welcoming, it was part of the furniture. Sometimes my father would say, ‘If you’re a bad boy, you’re going to have to open all that mail and sort it!’ But he never made me do it; he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

How whimsically lovely! Wouldn’t you have adored living in such a home? And so the boy does.

Waiting for Bojangles is a slim and sweet novel by the French debut author Olivier Bourdeaut. The story’s principal wisdom has to do with the pros and cons of living a carefree life.

That “montagne de courrier” in the hall is indicative of how the boy’s parents live. Who cares about paperwork, when you can dance and drink and have parties and tell fantastical stories? That’s their philosophy, and so they live, for a long time.

But . . . can you see a foreshadowing of desperation and despair in this idyllic picture?

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Heard that before?

Now you have, in any case.

Feel free to attribute that quote to me.

After all, I wrote it.

(Look above, if you don’t believe me.)

Take it and run with it, Internet!

Origin of the Quote

Oh, so you require more persuasion before quoting me on that? You wish to know who said “Everything in moderation, including moderation” before I did?

That’s easy—it was my date the other night. We might have been discussing whether we should order more small-plated food. Upon which he uttered the aforementioned string of words. Or perhaps it was another round of drinks that we were contemplating. Or was it dessert? I can’t remember; I was pretty inebriated at that point.

I’m confident that he said it, though. I remarked that that sounded like good wisdom, and that I should write a blog post about that. He remarked that that sounded like an excellent idea. And we flagged down the waitress and put in another order . . . of whatever it was we were contemplating ordering.

In any case, once I had recovered from that bout of immoderation, I decided to investigate the origins of the saying. If you believe the Internet (and—let’s be honest—who doesn’t??), the first part was said by everyone from Socrates to Aristotle to other illustrious, sandal-wearing dudes; while the latter part was tacked on by everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Oscar Wilde to Julia Child, not to mention several less famous, but surely equally redoubtable, personages.

What difference, I ask, is one more soul in this little parade of elocutionists likely to make?

Analysis of the Quote

Lately, I’ve had Taylor Swift’s album Reputation on repeat. Its first song “…Ready for It?” has a relevant lyric:*

I see two extremes here. Trying too hard to win over a crush seldom works. As for not trying at all . . . at first blush, this seems like a good strategy. Swift’s narrator is certainly captivated by the man in question. She launches into an extended fantasy about captivating his desire as he has captivated hers, and all that will happen as a result.

However, if the narrator’s crush is truly not trying at all, is anything likely to happen between them? Doubtful. Sure, she could throw herself at a man who isn’t trying at all to win her love. But if he’s really that uninterested in her (or uninterested in love with anyone, or cynical about any possibility of love), her dreams about him touching her, while they’re someplace with low lighting on some island, begin to sound more creepy than romantic.

The narrator ends the song by repeating these words:

If he’s not trying at all, then the answer is clearly no, he’s not ready for it. Playing a game with someone who isn’t trying at all is no fun at all. But if he’s only acting like he’s not trying, but actually putting in a highly nuanced effort to win her affection? Now he’s starting to sound pretty cool . . . and like he knows something about the wisdom of moderation.

And maybe, while they’re on the island, he’ll ditch the whole moderation thing and go wild!

And then, being the wise man he is, he’ll give Taylor** a good-bye kiss, fly home, and mow his lawn.

Uses of the Quote

In conclusion, I wrote the saying “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” (See the opening line of this blog post, or, actually, to save time, see the previous sentence.)

You can quote me on that.

For example, you can quote me on your next batch of T-shirts, mugs, coasters, knickknacks, wall hangings, notepad covers, or other trinkets you plan to sell on Etsy.

Feel free to go nuts with it!

Just, after you go nuts, back off for a bit.

Moderation, people.

*For a more complete analysis of the song, see the blog post by Clifford Stumme, a.k.a. the Pop Song Professor, called What does "...Ready For It?" by Taylor Swift mean?

**The name of the song's narrator is (coincidentally!!) Taylor.

Humor me for a moment, and mentally discard all those books that are, in your opinion, page-turners. Any reads that you find to be quick, easy, fun, fascinating, lovely, exciting, or otherwise engrossing are irrelevant to this discussion.

Next, add to that discard pile all those books that lack redeeming qualities, as far as you can tell. You’ve read a few pages and are bored senseless. And the book is not highly acclaimed by any reputable source. And you doubt you will learn or otherwise gain anything useful from it. These books are also irrelevant to our discussion.

What do we have left, once we toss aside the books that are a delight to read and the books we’re better off skipping? That’s right—difficult books that have value.

By now, you probably know me well enough to guess what I would advise you to do upon encountering such a book. (Hint: It doesn’t involve throwing anything across a room.) So I’ll skip the preachy lecture and proceed to the main discussion. What’s the best way to read a difficult book that has value—that has the capacity to teach you something or otherwise enhance your worldview?

1. Commit to a daily page count.

Since the only way to tackle a large project is to break it into manageable steps, I recommend setting a daily page count goal for yourself. Once you’ve decided on a goal, don’t think about how many hundreds of unread pages remain. Instead, focus on how many pages you plan to read today.

My usual goal is 40 pages per day. This is a loose goal. If one day I don’t read very much, the next day I try to exceed my goal amount. It’s also a loose goal in that I change it depending on the book. Books have different page sizes, font sizes, and reading difficulty levels. If it’s a denser or harder book than average, or if for another reason it takes me longer than usual to turn a page, I might make my daily goal 30 pages. If it takes me less time than usual to turn a page, I might make my daily goal 50 pages.

Forty pages per day is an ambitious goal for me. It’s hard to achieve, and I don’t always succeed; but I often do. It’s a good practice to aim high. Just remember to not only congratulate yourself on your achievements, but also cut yourself some slack if life gets in the way for a few days.

2. Skip the introduction, or read it afterward.

If the introduction was written by someone other than the author, do not read it first.* Once you’ve finished reading the actual book, you can, if you want, go back and read it; but this is optional. While introductions are often interesting and enlightening, they are supplementary material. They are commentary on the text itself—which is the main show.

Reading the introduction first can be a disheartening experience, one that may even cause you to abandon the book before making it to page 1! The introduction’s intended audience is a person who has already read the book and is curious about what someone else thought. Therefore, the introduction may mention scenes without explanations of what was going on, with the assumption that the reader has read them already and does not need such background information. If this isn’t the case, confusion is likely to result. The introduction may also include spoilers; and who needs those?

So why are introductions placed before the main text, if they are meant to be read after it? That’s a very good question! Like most everything in this world, it probably has to do with someone making money. When a publisher reissues an old classic, it tries to drum up excitement among potential buyers for a product that is, after all, passé by including a new, laudatory critique of the book, often by a famous author or someone with special expertise on the book. A person who has already read the book might buy it for the introduction. A person who hasn’t read the book might also buy it for the introduction; but even in that case, it not should be read before the main text.

3. Look up words and references you don’t understand.

Strike a balance between not looking up enough and looking up too much. Try to figure out which words are vital to understand, and which can safely be passed by. The danger of not looking up enough is that you might fail to understand what’s going on. The danger of looking up too much is that you might lose the flow of the reading, take so long that you start forgetting what happened earlier in the book, get lost in details and fail to grasp the big picture, or give up due to the tediousness of it all.

Your first step should be to guess what things mean based on context. If you don’t have a good guess, use your favorite search engine.

A couple decades ago, the main challenge was access to the information, as physical dictionaries and encyclopedias are bulky and heavy. Today, the main challenge is not getting sucked in to the Internet when you go there to look something up. Watch yourself while using your wifi-connected device!**

4. Avoid noise and disruption.

Everyone has different levels of tolerance as regards studying environments. For example, some people can study on a bus, while others find it too noisy and bumpy. However, everyone comprehends difficult texts better when outside stimuli and interruptions are reduced. If the book you’re reading is difficult, trying to read it in poor conditions will only result in frustration.

To avoid noise, obviously a quiet room is best. If that’s not possible, wear earplugs, noise-cancelling headphones, or both.

To avoid disruption, (1) silence your phone; (2) pretend that the Internet exists only as a surrogate dictionary/encyclopedia, and that clicking to other sites or apps will shock you (like a dog collar, preventing one from crossing the line!); and (3) practice extreme antisociality (you might warn your family and friends beforehand!).

If all else fails, take your book to a quiet corner of the library, and don’t leave until you have reached your daily page count goal.

5. Keep pressing forward, even if you don’t understand.

Some people mistakenly believe that reading the first chapter over and over will improve comprehension. Rereading may improve memory, but it likely won’t improve comprehension very much, unless you do something different the second time around. For example, if you were just skimming or flipping through during the first read, rereading the section in a more serious or methodical way is likely to help. Or perhaps you didn’t look up essential terms, in which case rereading while looking up terms may help. Or perhaps you were trying to read in a noisy, disruptive environment; rereading in different circumstances may improve your understanding.

Generally speaking, though, it’s better to press on. If you keep reading, you are likely to catch on to what the author’s trying to do. In fact, many difficult books are supposed to feel confusing at first; a big part of their appeal is the challenge of figuring them out. Think of a difficult book as a jigsaw puzzle when you have lost the picture on the box lid. You wouldn’t put together a few pieces, and then take them apart and put them together again just because you didn’t understand how the entire picture would look. The clues to “getting” a book are often located deeper within. If you keep moving forward, you may surprise yourself. Your big breakthrough realization about chapter 1 may not occur until chapter 10. And that’s okay.

6. Eat and sleep.

The brain needs food and rest to function. The more hungry or tired you are, the less effective it will be in doing the complicated work of translating text to meaning. If you’re following the tips above but still aren’t getting it, grab a snack or take a nap, and try again. You will be amazed at how much more intelligible everything suddenly is.

7. Don’t give up.

This is the one that trips up the most people. So, make a commitment to yourself to finish the book, and diligently work toward your goal, until you achieve it.

Remember that finishing a high-quality book is a worthy goal, since many books don’t impart their fullest wisdom until you have made it to the end. And, nope, skipping to the end won’t work. You won’t acquire the wisdom unless you get there the hard way.

Best of luck with your reading endeavors. I know you will make it through that big one on your nightstand! With persistence, many things are possible.

*While I feel strongly about this, some people feel differently. To read arguments on both sides, check out the Keeping Up With the Penguins blog post Do You Read the Introduction First?

**Avoiding distraction in the Internet age is a large and important topic; see also my blog posts about the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.