One part of the PhD process at Duquesne College is to read and summarize an extensive reading list, in addition to in-class readings, before we sit for comprehensive exams.

The intention behind this is wildly worthy, as the importance of acknowledging what came before you is crucial to contributing to a conversation that has started long before you and will live long after you’re gone. No experience is isolated. Every moment is an opportunity to prove the importance of the other.

With that in mind, I started thinking through this book list. This a not small at all kind of challenge.

I built a spreadsheet and completed 10 or so summaries/ read the books. I paid attention to the outcomes and wanted to take the task from isolated to integrated this summer. Here were my options:

1. Grab the books when you can, read/summarize them in isolation and pat yourself on the back for accomplishing a task wow how impressive kind of task.
2. Make a public book gift list for anyone to grab for you. They choose the book most interesting to them. When you get the book, you mail them back a custom book you make. Art that is 1:1. And then when you read the book, you have a friend at the ready to chat about said book!

Obviously, it was decision number 2. No contest. I’m always at the ready for some intentional human purposing, and I was so encouraged to see humans at the ready to participate. See my first book batch below:

Let’s just be clear about the juxtaposition of the first photo of my spreadsheet against these. Visually, it’s night and day. Experientially, it’s worlds apart. It’s undeniable human kindness carnage.

Together we have the opportunity to breathe life into every task on our to-do lists, to make full what has been flattened, to make more of meh; but we have to do it together. Let’s reject the path of least existence.

No one is nothing. Someone can’t help but be something, and I’m beginning to believe that everyone makes everything, if we’re paying attention.