Reading Heschel

For some time I have been reading Heschel's Man is Not Alone in the mornings, after meditation, sit ups, and push ups, with my coffee. On the one hand, it's a great book, full of much wisdom. On the other, I feel like so little of it sticks to my brain. I read a couple of pages at a time and think "I really need to come back and reread this in the future." Part of it is just pandemic fatigue and change whiplash. I also think part of the problem is that like Kierkegaard he's such a smooth writer that you want to underline everything, but the world isn't like that. You can't have it all be dessert. The mind can only process so much aesthetic pleasure before it starts discounting the experience. For the same a cheeseburger tastes so delicious when you haven't had one in a while, but not if you had one yesterday.