Just Finished Reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King (for the 4th Time)

For a book that came out less than nine years ago, Stephen King's time travel novel 11/22/63 has to be one of my all-time favorites...I just finished reading it, and for the fourth time at that.  This time around I checked it out from my public library's Libby site and listened to its lengthy duration at 2X speed...that comes in pretty handy at times.  Sometimes I wonder why a particular book will get a hold on me and with this one, I have to admit that it's very good in a number of areas.  But I am always intrigued by the notion of the "rabbit hole" or secret entranceway to another place or time.  What King pulled off here with his story is nothing less than genius: the special door from 2011 to 1958 has already been discovered, and Al Templeton has thought it all out pretty much as many of us would have: first explore around, then take advantage of what going back and forth in time can do for you...and then begin to think of more serious uses.  I don't expect any special, secret porthole to another dimension or era in my own material life, but I can expand what Stephen King presented into a workable allegory...

Paradigm shifting isn't as vividly dramatic as stepping through an invisible opening to another time, but you're still stepping through...albeit mentally...into another way of seeing things.  What I am talking about here is both intellectual and emotional empathy, whereby you deliberately shed your well-designed clothing of stances on issues and people and instead see things from the vantage point of another with a different take.  I actually do this a lot in my life, and furthermore I have come to the strong belief that there is a sizeable number of fellow travelers through life...and quite a few on social media...who are cognitively incapable of empathy, dividing everything they see only in starkly stratified terms: black or white, good or evil, worthy of idolization or worth of contempt.  And if we're talking politics, I'm seeing this inability or unwillingness to see things from the other guys' perspective on both sides of the ongoing debate.  You idolize Trump and scorn Biden?  Try criticizing the former and genuinely praising the latter.  You like Biden (I doubt many idolize him...to his credit) and despise Trump? Likewise criticize Joe and find something nice to say about our president.  And with the issues that people are so rapt up in, why not take a little time and see things from the other side's viewpoint...in their words, not just those of their critics...starting with the issues you feel the most passionately about.  I look at the different people in politics and the issues around me and I know that there are legitimate reasons to take the sides people take...but what I don't accept is the notion that those who disagree with me are evil or stupid dupes.  What I do accept is that people tend to become comfortable with their own narratives, which they sometimes wrap around themselves so tightly that they tend to confuse them with reality itself.  Why not take a break...if you're capable of it, that is...and step through the invisible passageway out of your own narrative and into a refreshingly different environment? Unlike with Stephen King's novel, it's really possible and no secret...