Here's What You Missed

‘Free Time’ is not a luxury for most people. In a decade plagued by unemployment, I traded what others would consider a luxury (work, career, salary, and being part of an institution) for Free Time.  I have never felt any better. Gone are the days of compulsory reading, of procrastinating, of notes to self like “Self, if you don’t read this pile, you’ll deliver the worst lecture of your life tomorrow, something you do not want to be remembered for.”

Because I used to be short of time, I have developed a bad habit of hoarding books, browsing a couple of its chapters before tucking it away into the book shelf. All three of the bookshelf’s compartments are crowded with dust-gathering books and whenever I looked in its way, there’s always that feeling of guilt. And may I not forget that there’s another pile of hardbound gathering cobwebs under my bed. 

But now, if I am not listening to my mom as she tells stories of just about anything, or perhaps rolling on the floor laughing over Barney’s antics on How I Met Your Mother, I spend my glorious free time on the bed - reading, enjoying narratives and accounts from all over the world and marveling at how an author could weave words together to come up with a powerful literary piece. Then run downstairs to make myself another cup of coffee before flipping the next page. 

Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, And The Collision of Two Cultures almost functions as a pillow to me. This is my favorite book of all time. This is cultural anthropology and creative non-fiction at its finest. This should be a required reading not merely for anthropology students and social workers but also, and most especially, for medical practitioners and development authorities.

Now that I’ve got more time in my hands, granting me clarity of thoughts, I realized there is something about re-reading Ann Fadiman’s work that inspires the scholar in me. Although I still wished my free time didn’t remind me that my Oliver Sacks’ An Anthropologist on Mars is missing, I am more than glad to welcome Richard Dawkins, Franz Kafka, Bruce Chatwin, Annie Dillard, Alvin Toffler and even Antoine de Saint-Exupery (I never finished The Little Prince) on my bedside table.  

Ah, the smell of paperback. Sorry Barney, I’ll put you on hold for a while. This girl’s got some catching up to do.