Annie Dillard Reflection

Vanessa Zamora

I found great pleasure reading these texts over the past few weeks. The authors have opened my mind to recognize different ways of living through their perspectives. Whether I was influenced by their words positively or negatively, I was pleased to have read and been guided through new directions of different types of living. Below are my thoughts and feeling towards each of the readings and how each one has affected me.

“An infant is a pucker of the earth’s thin skin; so are we. We arise like budding yeasts and break off; we forget our beginnings. A mama swells and circles and lays him down. You and I have finished swelling; our circling periods are playing out, but we can still leave footprints in a trail whose end we do

That is essentially what makes Annie Dillard such a special writer. After reading For the Time Being, I experienced thoughts about different views on life in a unique, almost-frightening way. As I said before Annie Dillard is special. Her writing is beautiful and her sentences are constructed to near perfection or, even perfection, if I’m being completely honest. She spoke about things like bird-headed dwarfs, crabs, sand, and even birth which she was able to gather similar thoughts about. These thoughts consisted of living in a world as it is and simply, existing. When I said an almost-frightening view of life, what I meant was, Dillard makes you think deeply about why you exist in the world, where you come from, and out of all people, why do you even matter or otherwise, do you even matter? Which are all very frightening questions to think about. But, after much reflection and thought, I’ve traced Dillard’s thoughts back to when she spoke in chapter five about how there are millions of deaths every day and they mean absolutely nothing to us. People watch the news to feel connected, but connected

Botton suggests in his writing that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead, steal from them because religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. He proposes that we should look to religion for insight on how to do so. Chapter one is titled, Wisdom without Doctrine, yet one of the most common ideas presented throughout this book is that atheists should adopt the highly repressive approach of religions, which dictate precisely, when and how we should learn, think, communicate and even eat. If that isn’t doctrine, I don’t know what is. The whole book is predicated on the flawed and distressingly common assumption that those without religion are missing something vital - that they have a hole in their lives that only religion can fill. Apparently I’m not getting the most out of my life because, unlike faithful Christians, I am doing it all wrong simply because no one told me how to do or think things properly. People thinking for themselves is unethical, according to Botton. After this read, I felt enlightened to live exactly how I’ve been living which is without religion.

The context of religion and other perspectives of living made reading these texts very intriguing. I felt extremely moved by Annie Dillard and her disposition to live in a world by just existing. Charles