When I read Jane Eyre, I stalled for a full year between the opening part at the boarding school and the rest of the book.
I tend to dislike boarding-school openings in books, but the real problem was I found myself having to reread too many of Charlotte Brontë’s winding, multi-clausal, colon-encrusted sentences. Her writing is beautiful, but some sentences contained so many twists and detours that I would often lose the flow of them and have to take a second go. The book was clearly a special one, but whenever I looked at it I got tired at the thought of diving back in.
I finally regained traction by reading it aloud. I finished the whole book this way, which made it an unfettered joy. Because each of its complex Victorian sentences had to pass through my mouth, I found it easy to stay with their meaning and structure. The reading was slower, but much smoother, with very little doubling back. It felt like I was finally driving in the appropriate gear for the terrain.
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I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human -- things we can do to improve our lives today.
The ice cream example made me laugh. Even getting exactly what we wanted can turn straight into reaching for the next spoonful. Using just one inbreath as the starting point makes this feel much more approachable than setting out to “be still for twenty minutes”.