If you’re studying math, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.
Steve Martin
Consider me screwed.
I read pretty much anything about baseball, save for kids’ books and most fiction, but there are only so many biographies or team profiles or event-driven publications you can get excited about. That’s why I look for the odd man out, like Tao of Baseball: Entertaining & Thought-Provoking Commentaries on the National Pastime
I won’t go into the whole Buddha book, but the big takeaway for me is the concept of impermanence. Not to get overly philosophical or morbid about it, but it has become a part of my daily life, reminding me not to take things so seriously. Something goes wrong at work? No big deal. No one will remember it in a week. Granted, it’s not a perfect tack to take, but I guess when you get to be a certain age, you learn that things will eventually sort themselves out. (I recently read a meme that went something like, “If it won’t matter in five years, don’t spend five minutes thinking about it.”)
The Conversation with Lopez — Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages at the University of Michigan — was perhaps the most intimidating I have conducted. After all, he’s an expert on the topic and the author of several books. Not to mention he’s a hard-core baseball fan. I certainly didn’t want to make a fool of myself with my naive questions. You be the judge.
I usually don’t promote other interviews when I post one of these — does Macy’s tell Gimbels? (kids, ask your grandparents) — but since this book had such a powerful effect on me and Politics & Prose is one of my favorite bookstores, here’s an event Lopez did with them back in July.
is available on Amazon.com,
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