The Old Man and the Sea

Norah is in Challenge 1 at Classical Conversations.  Right now, she's reading The Old Man and the Sea and writing an essay on it.

To be more engaged with her as she works this week, I read the book, too.

I had read it before, but the details were vague and I remember thinking it was boring.

I loved it this time!

One of my favorite quotes was:

"He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of pride."

This quote resonated with me, because I've been humbled by several mistakes and failures in the past several months. I am pushing my limits all the time in several areas of life, so failure and mistakes are just bound to happen, really, if I think about it.  So I am more reasonable about that and accepting of it.

At this point, thankfully, I usually don't feel much embarrassment for very long, and I have to say, this is really nice, because mistakes and failures used to debilitate me for hours or days. When I make a public mistake now or try and fail at something now, I just admit/ accept it and move on.  I usually think something like, "Well, here we go again. I know myself.  And I know God loves humility, after all. This is one more opportunity to practice humility and one more proof that God is committed to my sanctification."  So this quote resonated with me, because I begin to see that a person can have humility, because humility goes hand and hand with honesty.  A person can be humble without being totally defeated and that same person can have pride without it needing to be arrogance that comes from denial.

I also cried at the end. It was a sobbing cry. Getting older and having people I love get older made the story come to life. I saw my dad's body fail him, ultimately. I felt his spirit leave his body, since his body was no longer capable of holding his spirit.  So I was touched by this story, because it subtly speaks to these realities.  

I was glad to read this with Norah. We've already had a few amazing conversations about the book. To her credit, even though she's still very young, she loved it.  She does express regret that he made it back with only a skeleton.  But, from where I am in life, I tend to think, "But what a skeleton!"