Reading like a Fiend

So, I am still unemployed and on the hunt for a job. There are a few promising positions, so keep your fingers crossed for me! One of them is a secretarial position in a mental health office that specializes in treating children with behavioral issues. Since Psychology is my major (and my passion!), I would love a position like this because it would allow me to get my foot in the door in the mental health profession, and allow me to observe and see if I really want to work with troubled children.

Anyway, as the title of this post suggests, I have been reading like CRAZY! On vacation I burned right through 3 or 4 novels, one of which is called "The Punch", by Noah Hawley. I also just finished a really interesting novel by Toni Jordan, called "Addition". It was a quick read--I could not put it down! It is about a woman who suffers from Obsessive Compusive Disorder in the form of counting everything in her life. Numbers control her, from the number of steps she takes to the number of bites of her food she must consume, to the time of day she must complete different tasks. She meets a man, and everything changes as she realizes she can't possibly control everything. I was really moved by this book (which is actually quite hilarious, by the way) because, although I have never been diagnosed with OCD, I definitely think that people with EDs have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, especially in terms of counting calories and keeping track of weight, etc.

There was a paragraph near the end of the novel that I wanted to share with you all, because it really resonated with me:

"Most people miss their whole lives, you know. Listen, life isn't when you are standing on top of a mountain looking at the sunset. Life isn't waiting at the altar or the moment your child is born or that time you were swimming in deep water and a dolphin came up alongside you. These are fragments. 10 or 12 grains of sand spread throughout your entire existence. These are not life. Life is brushing your teeth or making a sandwich or watching the news or waiting for the bus. Or walking. Every day, thousands of tiny events happen and if you're not watching, if you're not careful, if you don't capture them and make them count, you could miss it.

You could miss your whole life."

Question: What is a book (or passage from a book) that has really affected you?