“Buy me a Coke.”
On any other day, this line would land this book in the trash. Why? No one buys the Coke! It’s so random, it never gets mentioned again, and it doesn’t fit in with the characters or storyline.
I’ve never been able to get over a kink in a novel, just like I cannot get over slight annoyances. By obsessing over small issues, I’ve kept myself up at night, ended good friendships, and leapt into many hasty decisions.
But this time, I told myself, “Look, if you don’t get it, so what? Continue reading and you’ll eventually realize whether or not it is relevant. At that point, you can always flip back and read it again. Don’t waste time being frustrated with it.”
When I finished this novel, I realized that things that don’t make sense to me do not always have to make sense. Sometimes they’re not as important as I’m making them out to be. I can let them go without much consequence. Overcoming “buy me a coke” was a personal triumph for this detail-obsessed practitioner. It became an experience that enabled a shift from immensely detailed contemplations towards a more zoomed-out, macro view of things.
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