Reaching page 358 out of 1084

For one of my new experiences I wanted to read a book with over a thousand pages. I love to read but have never completed a big of that size, mainly because most books just aren't that big. It has been a fluid goal of mine since around the eighth grade. I definitely won't read a thousand-plus pages in a week, so I started reading one in May and whenever I finish it, that will be the week I count as my new experience.

The book I'm reading is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I am into the second part of the book now.

This is an excerpt from her book:

What he knew, what he had discovered that night, was that his recaptured love of existence had not been given back to him by the return of his desire for her--but that the desire had returned after he had regained his world, the love, the value and the sense of his world--and that the desire was not an answer to her body, but a celebration of his will to live.

He did not know it, he did not think of it, he was past the need of words, but in the moment when he felt the response of her body to his, he felt also the unadmitted knowledge that that which he had called her depravity was her highest virtue--this capacity of hers to feel the joy of being, as he felt it.

At an earlier part in the book, when Hank and Dagny, the characters above, first slept together, Hank viewed Dagny's desire as base and depraved. It is this moment when Ayn Rand really simplifed the feelings of these two characters, Hank and Dagny. They were brought together through their love of existence, as Hank at once realized. The sex between them stands in contrast to other characters who are either going through the motions or holding themselves to higher moral values because they deny themselves pleasure on no moral grounds other than denying themselves pleasure. To me these paragraphs hold so much clarity on the real essence of life; to enjoy our existence, to use our great capacity to love life. It is not that they are happy because they are sleeping together; it is that they are fully present as human beings that they desire each other in the first place. The pleasure is created before sex is even in the picture, which I think is the opposite of how too many people view it. To reduce sex to an isolated event, with no connection to our immense potential for happiness, and our present level of it, is I believe one reason why some people struggle with it and go through the motions, expecting sex to fully create happiness rather than realizing it is meant to be borne of it; they wonder why it does not live up to their expectations. Additionally perhaps this is why it is so common to denounce it as something evil and depraved. If the capacity of enjoying existence is closed, it is closed in all realms.

When thinking of an example of someone who savors the moments of her existence, I think of a woman named Molly who was a former co-worker of mine. She worked at the Weber County Library and regardless of what she was doing, she gave it her full awareness, as if she never forgot she was alive. When she helped patrons at the desk, she was rewarded both by their presence and her ability to help. When I asked her what she would be doing over the weekend and she talked about cleaning and getting ready for the following week, she said it with zeal, not exhaustion. She looked forward to cleaning; it was her preparation for days ahead which she would enjoy because she had the capacity to live an organized and autonomous life. Autonomous not only in the sense of taking care of herself financially, but emotionally. Even when she had to talk to a patron who struggled to take care of himself and had a hygiene problem addressed by other patrons, she even seemed to enjoy talking to him about it, if for the knowledge that she could handle difficult issues with her competence and social grace.

She moved away from Utah a few years ago, but I know wherever she is now, she still possesses the smooth self-confidence of a person at ease with her own happiness. There was a simple joy of just being alive that seemed to state itself in every action she took. She remains an example to me of a person who already knows the meaning of life is inherent in the simple pleasures of being alive.