I Read About It Every Night

It starts at about nine.

One question. Something specific that came up while you were standing at the sill, and it seemed worth looking up, and you looked it up.

And then the answer contradicted something else you had read, so you checked that, and the second source raised a thing you had not considered, and by the time you looked up it was five past midnight.

That has happened four nights this week.

And here is the thing to say before anything about plants, because it is the thing you already suspect.

The reading is not preparation for tending it. The reading has become the tending.

And it does not feel like that from the inside. From the inside it feels like being thorough, which is a thing you have been your whole life and which has served you well in every other area. That is what makes this one hard to see from where you are sitting at five past midnight.

Of making many books there is no end

Ecclesiastes finishes with a line that people quote as a joke about publishing and which is not a joke.

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (Ecclesiastes 12:12, King James Version)

Much study is a weariness of the flesh.

You are being warned about a real cost that lands in the body, and no amount of reading has ever once been free of that particular tax. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man closing a screen at five past midnight.

Notice what it does not say. It does not say study is wrong, or that learning is vanity, or that a man should not find things out.

It says there is no end to it, which is a statement about the supply, and that much of it wearies the flesh, which is a statement about the cost.

Both of those are simply true, and both of them are aimed at somebody who has been at it for hours and does not know why he is tired.

You were never rebuked for wanting to know, and the tiredness that comes off three hours of reading has never once been the tiredness of a lazy man. The Spirit of God is what turns that from a warning into a mercy, and Ecclesiastes 12 is where the weariness is written down.

What three hours has produced

Now the practical half, and it is a question rather than a fact.

What did you actually do differently as a result of any of it.

Go back over the four nights. Something like nine or ten hours, across a week, on one plant on one windowsill. And then count the actions that came out of it.

Most weeks the honest answer is one, or none. One slightly different watering. A move considered and not made. That is not a criticism of the reading. It is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is what makes this visible.

You are allowed to look at your own week honestly, and a number that comes out badly has never once been a verdict on the man who counted it. Ecclesiastes 12:12 names the weariness without naming a fault, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an honest count bearable.

You have spent nine hours and produced almost nothing you could point at, and that ratio has never once been the fault of a man who was trying to do it right. What is written in Ecclesiastes 12:12 names an endless supply and a real cost, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man look at his own arithmetic without flinching.

And here is the mechanism, because it is worth seeing.

Every source contradicts another source. That is not a failure of the sources, it is because plants live in different houses, and the person writing had a different window.

So there is no bottom to it. The search cannot terminate in a finding, because the finding does not exist, and the only thing that ever ends the session is exhaustion or the clock.

You are searching for a floor that is not down there, and no night of reading has ever once been able to end in the answer you were looking for. The Spirit of God is the one who says that plainly, and Ecclesiastes 12 is the ground under the endlessness.

Shut it at ten

So here is the instruction and it is a boundary rather than a prohibition.

Shut the screen at ten tonight. And read nothing about the plant.

Not less reading. None, tonight. Because reducing it is a negotiation, and a negotiation at half past ten with a question already open is not a negotiation you win.

And then water the plant or do not. Either. Whatever you would have done before you started reading.

You have known what to do about that pot since this morning, and nine hours of reading has never once been what tells a man when soil is dry. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man back his own judgment.

That part matters, because the reading was supposed to improve the decision, and you already know what the decision is. It has been the same decision all week.

You are able to make the call you were always going to make, and nine hours of reading has never once been required for a man to know when a pot is dry. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man shutting a laptop while the question is still open.