Background
refer you to the portfolio of Badger29, for previous chapters
irish
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Reading is the greatest self-educator that exists. Almost any question you can ask, somewhere has a written answer. In this age of enlightenment, many answers are available with access to the internet.
However, for fulfillment, one must read the masters and their interpretation of life. Start with the Greek philosophers, Plato, Sophocles, Socrates, there is a list of two hundred of more on the internet. Graduate to the early classical, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain.
The early 20th century authors broke traditions and created some new expressions, Ford Maddox Ford, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce.
From there, it is a journey through the 50s and 60s all the way to the present.
What is most important, and what we carry with us, whether we acknowledge it or not, is the very early teaching we received in kindergarten through the fourth grade. If you were fortunate to have been the student of some wonderful teachers who loved their vocation, loved teaching, loved children and was talented enough to open your eyes to the world, then you are indeed among the 'fortunate few.' So many character traits stem from these simple, but complicated years:
Confidence, the ability to express ourselves through writing, tolerance of others and their shortcomings, and possibly the most important, self-reflection, which makes us aware of ourselves as individuals, but also as part of a larger, greater thing, the human race.
irish
