What I Found When I Started Coming Back

On the value of repetition..

I used to think I understood things after one encounter—read, comprehend, archive, done. My days ran on double-speed audiobooks, skimmed articles, knowledge neatly checked off lists. I was chasing efficiency, rushing to know more, faster.

Then I discovered something strange: revisiting an idea changes it, or maybe it changes you. What seemed straightforward on first glance revealed hidden corners on the second, third, tenth return. It felt like climbing a winding mountain trail; each lap bringing me back to the same view, but higher, clearer, richer each time.

Our minds quietly keep working even when we're not paying attention. A stubborn thought finally opens up while walking or showering, when I'm not forcing it. This background thinking, what scientists call "diffuse thinking," slowly weaves threads together when we're looking elsewhere. It seems like wasted time, but it's quietly essential.

Now my bookmarks aren't just labeled "read" or "unread," but also "revisit." They’re the texts that whispered something important I couldn't quite hear at first—the ones that demanded patience, a deeper communion.

The best insights resist shortcuts. Philosophy, creativity, emotional wisdom—they ask not only to be understood but lived, tried, felt, failed, and tried again. My bookshelf was once crowded with half-captured ideas, thoughts that passed through me without truly changing me. Now I slow down, picking carefully, returning patiently.

I wonder if we've traded depth for breadth, treating knowledge as something to collect rather than something to cultivate. Efficiency and depth aren’t really opposed; efficiency helps us sort through vastness, but depth comes from staying, lingering, returning again and again to what matters.

Some ideas simply need time. Perhaps our deepest delusion is resisting this slow truth. Real transformation happens quietly, in revisiting—in letting ideas sink beneath the surface, trusting they'll emerge renewed. The magic isn't in the reading; it’s in the returning, the quiet becoming.