Have you met "Bob"?

(Previously posted.)

I am not a person who has a great deal of free time. Now some of you are probably looking at me with a raised eyebrow, and thinking to yourself...hmmm..well, for someone with so little free time, you sure spend a great deal of time online. Well, yes. I do spend a great deal of time online. My life primarily consists of working full time and going to school full time, both of which mandate my being tied to my laptop during most of my waking hours. In complete defiance of everything I need to accomplish in a day’s time, however, I do take my one hour during lunch to do something for me.

More often than not, that something is reading...and also more often than not, it means reading books that require so little thought or concentration that one could easily calculate patterns of inheritance for autosomal recessive disease in their head at same time.* Despite the simplicity of most of the books I read at lunchtime, every so often I’ll stumble across something the writer has said that triggers a fascination with the words and/or concept being conveyed. The following is one such passage:

“Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often, I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like...Bob.” – Victor Carl
(Lashner, William. Falls the Shadow. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2005.)

It occurred to me upon reading those words that I have a great deal in common with the fictitious Mr. Carl. Being an INTP personality, (based upon the genuine Myer-Briggs, for those who believe in that sort of thing) I am quite wrapped up in my own mind much of the time, and certainly more than I am comfortable in admitting to you. While I won’t go so far as to say that I am not selfless (because I can be), it is true that it often takes a figurative “fist in the hair” to yank me out of the comfort and enjoyment I find in my own little world.

Fortunately for me, every so often an elusive “Bob” will come along and will “tear through the landscape [of my mind] like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in [his] wake.” You see, “Bob” has this gift of making one crave the pain of the destruction. He makes you see what has never before been seen. You begin to look forward to the discomfort of the reexamination, and to develop a curiosity about what will ultimately emerge from the ashes. Suddenly before you is something so consuming that you know, instantly you know: Nothing will ever be exactly the same again.

Do you know what I mean? Have you ever met “Bob”?

* Basic Genetics fulfilled the science requirement for a previous bachelor's degree.  Since the particular calculation mentioned above is the only thing I retained from the course, don’t be asking me about hypertrichosis or nutrigenomics. Your guess will be as good as mine....probably better.