As baseball season begins (the crack of taut horse-hide on polished ash), I sometimes think of the observation by ex-jock announcers of current rookies: “His future is all ahead of him.”

Communications is about hope, the future, helping our organizations meet their goals. When Jim and I conduct strategic communication planning sessions, we often engage participants in a “SWOT” analysis of the communication department’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Except we make it a “SWTO” analysis, to end on the note of optimism, the future, “opportunity”.

I once read in an essay by Woody Allen, referencing another, more intimate, context, that nothing is sadder than a missed opportunity.

An anecdote to illustrate the point:

Last Oct. 30, Jim and I were in Dallas, and, because it was his birthday, we went out after work for one perfect martini, before dinner with the client/friend. The waitress, a bright, literate, engaging young woman, talked us into a martini with blue cheese-stuffed olives on a stick.

They were so great we asked her, with her intelligence, presence, communications skills, etc: “Why are you waitressing?” She told us she had just graduated from SMU (Southern Methodist University) with a degree in corporate communications and was looking to find a job.

We told her that, coincidentally, we work for Ragan Communications, the oldest and largest company in the profession, with information sites, conferences, training, consulting, even a job site specifically designed for recent grads like her. We told her that our social site, myragan.com, had a networking group for recent grads.

Could we give her our e-mails and review her resume, or the addresses of our sites?

She smiled, as if we two older men were trying to make small talk, seemed completely distracted, pre-occupied and busy.

Few people get a job because a career counselor gives them a resume template or their parents tell them they’re special. It’s usually a connection; sometimes, a chance connection. Much of life happens by chance encounters.

So Jim and I went off to his birthday dinner with our client – our favorite client.

It was great. We’re too old to miss an opportunity.

See you behind the Hertz counter at DFW, sweetie.

Before “What’s your sign?” the great conversation starter was “Have you read any good books lately?” Or: “If you could take only one book with you to a desert island, what would it be?”

That gave way to “Have you seen any good movies lately?” And today: “Have you made any good movies lately?”

Evidently, people still read books they hold in their hands and turn its pages, though Kindle may well become this year's anniversary gift of choice in a certain blogger’s marriage.

But my point is that “Books I have read” is one of my favorite Profile categories in our sister social site, myragan.com. The maddening response, of course, is “Too many to list.” Obviously, the point of the category is to advance the networking goals of the site, and let’s hope anyone who makes her or his living with language has a certain depth to the bibliography.

It’s like a visitor asking us what our favorite Chicago restaurant is, and our saying: “Oh, there are too many good ones to mention.” That’s true, but not a conversation starter.

The person who posts “I’ve read too many books to mention” simply wants the Profile visitor to know that he or she is literate.

And that’s my point: The handful of books we reveal as having most influenced us is an index to our identity. It’s a glimpse inside us – and intimacy makes us uncomfortable.

One of our consulting colleagues –Katrina Gill, an expert on audits – asked me on a road trip last year what I was reading, and I told her the truth: “The Joy of Cooking” as prose and the “Catholic Catechism” for its structure. I think the candor of my response may have cemented our friendship.

On myragan.com, three of the best-read people in our company offered the following responses to the category.

• CFO Kevin McMurtrey gives it up for Henry James, Anthony Trollope, C.S. Peirce, Winston Churchill, and others. There’s more to Kevin’s life than numbers.
• myragan.com editor Michael Sebastian clearly understands the point of the category and cites “Of Human Bondage,” W. Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece on personal triumph over social resistance.
• Language columnist and managing editor Rob Reinalda’s tastes are eclectic, but run to the masters of the novel and the play: John Irving, Vonnegut, Salinger, Dickens, Shakespeare, David Mamet. Fiction and drama for Rob.

My point is this: Those books we’re willing to admit publicly as having shaped us tell others – strangers – as much about who we are as our resumes. Probably more. The great 20th century Canadian literary scholar Northrop Frye wrote that all of Western literature is about one theme: the individual’s quest for identity. In revealing what we’ve read, we reveal what we’re looking for, the person we’re looking to become.

Twenty-eight years ago when I interviewed for my job, Larry Ragan’s first question was “Tell me the last three books you’ve read.”

Thank God they were by Faulkner, Küng and Shakespeare, or I’d be selling men’s clothing (my other job offer) today.

So – those of you who wrote on myragan.com (and other visitors, of course) that you’ve read too many books to list, let’s have your favorite book of all time here. And, more important – why: what it says about who you are, or who you’re looking for.

What does this means for communicators? Try this: If readers are going to get anything out of the story, they must also see themselves in the story.