J recommended Goodbye to All That and it was an amazing reading experience. Over the years, reading recommendations have started to come from her to me as much as they flow the other way around. Not all suggestions are unknown or unfamiliar to either side but new meaning is added to a suggestion if it comes from J. I have also watched some movies she recommended and in many cases, what I took from the story was very different from her perspective so it is interesting to exchange notes after.
Two people even if very closely related can come to very different conclusions from reading the same facts. J is more fact-based and objective in her decision-making no matter what the issue at hand - that is just how she works. For me, the facts matter less or more based on what we are dealing with. In some cases, we will align because the issue was such that I relied on facts just as much as she did. But on the "interpretive" end of things, we will diverge a great deal. When she was younger, this was confusing to her but now she views it as a component of who I am. The Joan Didion essay was one of those things we were very much in sync on.
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