Mom and Dad reveal the answers

My parents and I swap books all the time, and while visiting them over the holiday weekend, I picked up their copy of The Silkworm and started to read.  Mom asked me if I needed a bookmark, and then went to a drawer and came back with a handmade, laminated one covered in neatly cut-out garden pictures.

I had forgotten about that bookmark.  I was probably in my early teens when I made it.

"See, this is what I'm talking about!" I yelled, much to both of my parents' surprise, for Mom handing me a bookmark hasn't historically produced such exclamations from me.  "Why did I do this?  Why was I making my own bookmarks?  What is the point?"

I explained that I had been going through my computer files and was overwhelmed by the amount of work I had channeled into things that, in hindsight, seemed like dead ends.

With the exasperation one can only level at an immediate family member, my parents responded quickly and authoritatively:

Mom:  "You made that bookmark because you're creative.  You've always been creative.  You had something inside of you that you needed to express, and that was the way you got it out."

Dad:  "It's not about 'what you have at the end.'  It's about the process.  It's about what you got out of it while you were doing it."

And I had to concede those were pretty good answers.

It really is a nice bookmark.