Can you read?

Silly question, of course you can. Otherwise what are you doing here. You’re just looking at a bunch of funny shapes, all neatly lined up on the screen, and it means nothing to you. Of course you can read. But the question is, do you read?

Sure, you read this blog. You read your emails. You very likely read Facebook and a few other things online. You read a newspaper, or, more likely these days, Google news or some other news source online. But is that it?

You spent quite a while learning to read, and it was quite an achievement. I know the feeling. I remember being on the top deck of a bus when I was probably only about five or six and reading out the names of the shops as we were passing them, or at least as best I could. My sister got fed up and shushed me. And my mother told her to let me alone, I was learning. It felt good that I could read (even if only a little bit), and it felt good that someone stood up for me and recognised that I was doing my best. I even remember a teacher saying something good about my reading (funny how it’s the good things that stick in your memory!). She said something like “Kenny reads very well for his age”, and that made me feel good as well, really proud of myself. Of course I remember, it was only a little over half a century ago!

The point I’m making is that reading is one of the most important skills we ever learn and we work hard to master it. Then, after a while, like with so many other things, we take it completely for granted. Even if we’re voracious readers, like I was, we tend to let it slide. Life’s so busy, after all, and there’s so much else to do. So we don’t read quite as much as we used to. Then, one day, without realising it, we hardly read at all.

There’s a saying that there’s not much difference between someone who can’t read and someone who doesn’t. Sounds a bit harsh, but I think it’s true. If you’ve got the skill and you never use it, you’re missing out on so much, and wasting what you’ve learned.

Adventure, intrigue, and a world of learning

There are whole new worlds of adventure and intrigue lurking in the countless works of fiction, just waiting to be discovered. Time travel has been conquered by the printed word; the thoughts and ideas of men and women of the past are conveyed to us magically through books. Being able to record our knowledge is what makes our world possible. Imagine if there were no way to let other people know we’d come up with something new … or invented a new process … or completed an important task. Everything we do, we record, in some way. Think of the second World War, and the holocaust. Without the endless documentary evidence of what happened we’d be so much more likely to let something like that happen again.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.” ~ Ray Bradbury

I know, I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know. Reading is hugely important, I know you get that. I’m just trying to remind you how important. And to nudge you to read a bit more. A bit more than just Facebook and the daily paper. If you used to read avidly, start to get back into the habit of reading again. Start on a few of those books you’ve seen in the best seller’s lists and actually read them, not just read about them. And if you’ve never really been much of a reader, what are you waiting for? Reading can be thrilling, enthralling, engrossing. Why do you think readers stick with a book for hundreds of pages – it’s not out of a sense of duty, it’s because they get so involved that they can’t stop!

And if there’s something you’d like to learn, there’s a book on it (probably dozens, even hundreds). Make use of some of that knowledge that’s available! Lap it up! Remember how you worked so hard to learn to read? Well, make it worthwhile, use that skill, and use it on a regular basis.

Make a start

A good way to make a start and see results is to set yourself a regular time for reading each day, and have a target of a single chapter, or let’s say twenty pages. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get you going. And once you’ve overcome that inertia you get from not reading, the flood gates will be open again. It’s not going to solve all your problems, and it might not change your life dramatically, but it will certainly add to it.