Imagine Thyself

Misreadings, Oliver Sacks, and my 2023 #bookstack

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn that said, “‘Know thyself’ is the beginning, ‘imagine thyself’ is the journey.”

What a interesting idea, I thought as I continued scrolling, utterly wasting time. I didn’t for a minute consider that I had misread the post.

When I went back to make a note of the line, I reread what was actually there, “‘Know thyself’ is the beginning, ‘manage thyself’ is the journey.” Wah wah…not exactly the pop of insight I had imagined.

What was interesting about this little episode is that it reminded me of an essay that Oliver Sacks wrote a few years ago, a few months before his death, called “Mishearings.” In it he talks about how his increasing deafness as he ages has caused him to mishear comments from others, often imputing different words and meanings to what they’re saying.

Though we don’t often associate these sorts of mental mix-ups with the “Freudian slip” it’s part of the same idea. As Sacks notes:

“After the publication of Freud’s “Psychopathology of Everyday Life” in 1901, such mishearings, along with a range of misreadings, misspeakings, misdoings and slips of the tongue were seen as “Freudian,” an expression of deeply repressed feelings and conflicts.”

Mishearings, and misreadings, are misperceptions in a way. But, as Sacks notes, “all of our perceptions must be constructed by the brain, from often meager and ambiguous sensory data, [so] the possibility of error or deception is always present.”

What I love about Sack’s writing is how generous and compassionate his observations are, both of others and of himself. He views the abnormal as information rather than mistake, uncertainty as a window into the complexity and richness of the human experience. (Check out Hallucinations and/or Gratitude, especially).

In that vein, after recognizing my misreading, I tried to observe it as I imagined Dr. Sacks might have: what is this misreading telling me about myself? Which is to say, what does the way I read tell me about myself?

As has become my custom at the end of the year, I try to stack up all the books I’ve read and take a snapshot, both as an accounting and a reminder of where my mind has been. This year the exercise felt enlightening simply because of the lack of apparent theme or thread.

There were leadership books related to my current book project, and a number of memoirs and essay collections, a few books about faith, and never as many novels as I’d like.

The thing I read that stuck with me the most was Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. It is a quick read, and well worth it, but its genre bending insight into the world of physics and how we imagine our impact on the world still has my mind reeling. And looking back at the stack now I’m realizing how many other things I read that lean hard in the mystery and complexity of it all.

I’ve always liked E.M. Forster’s quote on writing, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” And Pascal’s observation, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

In this moment I’m wondering, how do I know what I think until I see what I’ve read? And when I read, how much am I just avoiding being alone with my thoughts? Looking for the one line or quote or idea that might crack open a new insight, that might allow me to better imagine myself.

It seems like the right time of year to noodle on this kind of idea. Less goals and resolutions, more just trying to hear oneself think.

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Happy Holidays, and cheers to the new year! See you again sometime in January.