Second Mountain

Not long ago I read a passage about falling into a valley. The valley can be a personal one or a societal one or both. It's a smash. All the way to the bottom.

But in case you thought it must be suffering that shatters everything at the very bottom, let me tell you the meaning of the valley, the lessons I'd learned from David Brooks after reading his new book The Second Mountain. Being in the valley lets us see deeper into ourselves, to move from self-centered to other-centred, to embark on a new journey to the second mountain.

These are precisely the words we need to remind ourselves today, when our city stumbles into the deepest valley ever.

Everyone struggles. Everyone sheds tears.

Of course, crying isn't always a solution. Or even an option. I think, more than anything, it helps to read the powerful book and learn from David Brooks, who has always mentioned the second mountain discovered by Viktor Frankl. Paraphrasing Frankl, Brooks writes that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing - the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Tiger

You'll be forgiven if you've never heard of Téa Obreht. Her knack for writing began to be recognized in 2011 with her debut novel, The Tiger's Wife.

I had stumbled upon this book with Balkan history before my Croatian trip. I didn't have time to read it until my return from Croatia. My elder brother, who came back from the States to visit our family, couldn't hide his sly facial expression when he happened to see the novel's title.

"No, no, no," I lost no time in making myself clear before my wife became leery of me. "Now, listen. This has nothing to do with a tiger wife. It's about a tiger's wife, not a tiger wife."

No sooner had I finished Téa Obreht's tiger fable, than I heard about her most recent novel Inland from The New York Times Book Review this afternoon. That's her second novel after an eight-year wait.

Wait. My elder brother also came after an eight-year wait; his family last visited us in 2011. Well, if this has anything to do with clairvoyance, the chance is that my elder brother shall be back when the third novel of Téa Obreht is out.

Let's pray for more books to come from Téa Obreht.