3.20.2009

Here's a question and answer follow up of the J. Bell story below ("Are we ghosts?"):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html


I like these:

Boston, MA: Gene, your writing normally doesn't make me cry, to say the least. This story did, and it was also sent to me by a friend who described it as "heartbreaking." I cried because I find it scary and depressing to think of how obliviously most people go through daily life, even smart and otherwise attentive people. Who knows what beautiful things I've missed by just hurrying along lost in my thoughts? It's almost a panicky feeling, that if a performance by Joshua Bell on his Strad gets lost in the shuffle, what about about all the smaller beautiful things that happen every day and could be making people happier, if only they paid attention?

Gene Weingarten: Yeah. Tom the Butcher explained it this way: People are spiritually starved, and feel, just below the surface, that their culture is strangling them.
I think that's it. I think that's what people are feeling.
_______________________
one of the weepies: As one of the people that wrote to tell you it made me cry.....to me, some of the things that make life so rich and bring me joy are the small moments like stopping to watch the cardinal outside my window. But it made me realize that despite my rhetoric, I rarely let myself indulge in these things when it really counts.

Gene Weingarten: Right.