snooping...

There’s a table in the faculty offices and I sit there to study several days a week. Two other guys from my classes sit there as well, and when I arrived today at noon, they’d already left for lunch, but left their books sitting on the table.

And one of them left their briefcase. Right there. On top of the table. Open, as if just begging for someone to peer into it.

So I did. I didn’t touch anything. I just stood on my toes and plunged my nose forward scanning the items.

The only thing I noticed was a book called Psychoanalysis and Religion.

Immediately, I was swept up in thought and wanted to grab the book. Exactly how did Freud and religion converge? Wasn’t that almost an oxymoron? Was this book arguing for a combination of the two? What exactly was the premise? I was dying. My little peek was acceptable as within the 'plain view' rule, but I couldn't pick the book up.

At the same time, who freakin’ reads anything related to Freud anymore? Penis envy? Are you kidding me? If I envy men it’s because I’d like to be treated equally, not because I want to be one or have my own, you know. Freud was kind of a narrow-visioned idiot in some respects. Had my friend not read the passage in Through the Children’s Gate where Gopnik jokes of visiting the last living psychoanalyst?

And of course then I’m wondering why the guy has the book. Is his rationalism struggling with a childhood influence? Is he like me where he wishes god existed, but just can’t make himself buy into it? Did he crave an external yardstick of morality? Was it for a class?

I sat there for a few seconds wondering if there was an emotional and/or intellectual depth I’d somehow failed to notice in my classmate, an innate yearning for knowledge or the meaning of life, a soul mate of sorts sitting beside me all this time.

After a few minutes I shrugged it off. Nah, who would read a book like that…for fun?

…so says the girl currently reading Phenomenology of Perception...for fun.