LOOKING OVER MY READERS’ SHOULDERS

I discovered recently, via a weekly email I receive from a Mr. Rob Eager, there’s a way to see which phrases from Eyewall are most frequently highlighted by readers on their Kindles.

Another wonder of the electronic-digital era. I can look over my readers’ shoulders.

Kindle readers, by the way, have the option of making public their highlights and notes, so it’s not like Amazon, the purveyor of Kindles, is electronically eavesdropping on them.

Anyhow, I was curious to see which, if any, phrases from Eyewall readers might be underlining, so to speak.

It turned out there are quite a few. Leading the pack is an aphorism from my father. I remember it well because, as I learned over the years, it resonates with truth: “Things are seldom as bad as they first seem, or as good as they first sound.”

I heard the phrase often as I grew up whenever I’d figuratively go whining to Dad about this or that event in my life that seemed a lightning bolt from God designed to devastate me. In my youth, it was a Dear John letter. Later, a cancer diagnosis for my young wife. And later yet, a job loss. So on and so forth. We’ve all been there.

And Dad was right, things were seldom as bad as they first appeared. For the most part, as you probably have discovered, we’re able to wade through the swamps of life without being eaten by alligators. Or cannibals.

Which is a segway to another Eyewall favorite: “If you really want to find out what the cannibals are up to, you have to walk naked through their village.” I heard or read that someplace within the last five years and absolutely loved it. The female weather officer in the novel, Karlyn, tells a journalist that when he asks why, with all the modern technology available, we still fly airplanes into hurricanes.

But the second most highlighted phrase turned out to be: “The right choices aren’t always the ones our heart would make.” I think that’s something we all come to realize as we mature—-we know intellectually or objectively what the correct decision is in a given situation, even though emotionally we’d rather do something else.

If you’d like to see what some of the other popular passages from Eyewall are, you can click here.

-April 2, 2012-