Canterbury Tales: Look for a Bible, or dictionary, to read
Here we are a week into 2005 and things still look the same to me.
Well almost the same. There’s a heck of a lot more low-carb and low-calorie food available at the grocery store, and there are a lot of Web sites devoted to the spouting off of New Year’s resolutions. I even found software designed to motivate you to keep your resolutions. Bookstores are packed with tomes on dieting, exercise and r?sum? writing.
With all the possible things we can resolve this year I have not (yet) met a single soul that’s willing to work on, well, their soul.
Why are so many resolutions about fixing up the outside when the inside is in dire need of repair? If I just lose weight, buy a new car, fix up my house, get a better job, I’ll be a better person, right?
Wrong, if you are a fat jerk, you’ll probably be a skinny jerk. If you scream obscenities from the window of your ’49 Nash, you’ll probably still be screaming from your Lexus SUV. If you are selfish in a trailer, you’ll be selfish in a mansion because none of the things you have done to improve your lifestyle have done a darn thing to improve your living.
If you really want to have a better year there are three self-help books you need to get that will make all the difference in the world.
No. 1: the Bible. No matter what your religious affiliation, it’s a must have. Why? Because it is long and people will really be impressed if you read it all. The Bible is chock full of great ideas for everything from parenting and relationships to gardening and cooking. Marriage, family, business, sibling rivalry, even politics – it’s all in there, with examples (see the New Testament) and suggestions (see Proverbs) and even a soundtrack (see Psalms). War and Peace has nothing on this book and no reality show compares for drama and excitement.
Reading the Bible will change your living, at the very least a commitment to read it will improve your reading skills and vocabulary, and you might even learn something. There are no epistles from Dr. Phil to the Texans but you can still pick one up at any bookstore.
Vocabulary, oh yes, that brings me to No. 2, the dictionary.
Read it. It is a long poem about everything! With a dictionary you can express yourself to people and they will understand, or not understand, depending on whether they own one as well. The dictionary is like a giant hard-cover decoder ring. You can find a word to replace all of the swear words you know. The coolest thing about it is now you can spell all of the words you are learning so when you exercise your right to free speech and write letters to the editor, they’ll make sense.
That of course brings me to No. 3, the U.S. Constitution.
In the beginning, the Constitution was the document on which our entire system of government was based. These days, it has become an excuse to sue your boss for not providing breakfast in bed and a chauffeur-driven limousine to and from work because you are a sexually harassed, gay, minority, agoraphobic who is allergic to scented toilet paper.
Instead of hiding behind the Bill of Rights, which seems to be the only part of the Constitution we need anymore, I say we use the rest of the document, the part that outlines our responsibilities, and take our leaders to task about some of the stuff that’s going on in our nation’s capital.
Historically these books go together. Our founding fathers held a Bible in their hands as they wrote our Constitution, and used intelligent words we only find in dictionaries anymore. They’ll probably never be sold together though,
If they came in a boxed set, people might actually read them.
Ingrid Canterbury is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].