The pleasure is mine, VR. Thank you.
Got to thinking about your teenage epiphany, then took a trip down memory lane myself to recall what I was doing as a teenager. The habit of reading was inculcated in me early, and I was a great lover of books in those years and have been ever since. I recall at age 16 mainly I was reading Plato, and also Sigmund Freud. (I was hanging around the Boston Public Library pretty regularly in those days.) Soon thereafter, I discovered Dostoevsky.
Five years later — and ever since — I was still reading Plato and Dostoevsky. I read The Brothers Karamazov at least once a decade, whether I need to or not. :^)
I guess my tastes were formed pretty early: It seems my earliest memories were about my impressions (and wonder) regarding the sublime beauty and mystery of the world. Only later did I realize that Freud was one of the legion of intellectuals then and now who deforms and deracinates the world by his "theory," draining all of the truth, justice, and beauty out of it. And Dostoevsky wrote about the dreadful consequences of such a state of affairs....
I really must stop wool-gathering like this. :^)
Thanks so much for writing, VR!
Hey! You're supposed to dance with the one who brung ya.