Self Study: Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Are you a page flagger, sentence underliner, or margin note writer? In books that really intrigue me, I'm definitely a page flagger, using those little thin sticky notes to highlight different passages.

This book has oooooodles of marked pages!

Poet Mark Nepo has a unique perspective on the world and our place in it. You might be familiar with his most popular work, The Book of Awakening, but its just the tip of his literary iceberg.

What I always appreciate about his thought process is that he's not pretending to be a guru. He's genuinely trying to maximize the human experience from a grounded perspective. There are times when his observations, usually painted atmospherically with a connection to the natural world, move you to a soft place where it's easier to sit quietly and simply be.

In this particular book, he also presents different concepts and encourages you to take a "reflective pause" through various prompts. This is truly one of my favorite devices in non-fiction works so I can develop of a better understanding of what I just read.

So if you're in need of a comforting place to land right now, I highly recommend this and many of Nepo's other works. If you start flagging or underlining or margin noting, please share your favorite messages with me!