Not all readers lead, but all leaders read. Someone famous said that. Reading is the one of the most important things to incorporate into your life if you want to be successful. Weather it’s blog posts, novels, philosophy, magazines, manuals, poetry, pamphlets or plays- reading is reading, it’s learning to learn. It’s learning how words can be used. How we use words determines our life. There’s always a best word each time that we use one. The more that we read the more we’re exposed to the ways that words can be used. Our perspectives get widened.
When I started reading for real, a book or more every week, it felt like a challenge. It was a challenge. I’d tell myself 50 pages a day, and I’d have to really commit if I wanted to get there. And then it got easier. I found bukowski and read 3 of his books in a week. I liked how he wrote. He made me want to keep reading. It was then that I realised I wasn’t a bad reader, I was just reading things that I didn’t like. When you like a book, it’s not work anymore.
The first book I read this year was short and all about beauty. It was ok. It made a few points I agreed with and spent 20 pages explaining those points. I found this uninteresting because I already agreed with the points that they made. I skipped this part of the book. That’s okay. I still consider it to be a book I’ve read. I often find myself starting a book and feeling like I have to finish it. I’m in that situation right now. I’m about half way through “on the road” by kerouac, and it find it a challenge to read even 10 pages. Today I’m going to put this book down and check out a new one by Tom Robbins -I hear it’s great. Even though I haven’t finished it, I know enough about kerouac now to talk about his work. I have an idea of how he writes, and I know I’m not the biggest fan. I enjoy the book, but not enough to finish it. And that’s ok. I don’t need to read it for school, for work or for research -I don’t need to read it at all.
My best advice for anyone who finds reading to be a chore is this; stop reading books that make you feel that way. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s ok. Put it down. Find something else that interests you. You can learn just as much from a fictional story as you can from a philosophy book. You don’t have to read Nietzsche or Plato to hang with the smart crowd. There’s so much belief in the thought that smart people read all these dense heavy books. It’s not true. If you want to talk in bagatelle cloaked in grandiloquent jargon and alienation, then read something heavy. People will think you’re pretentious. If you want to learn to express your ideas in simple, understandable terms, read something lighter. Good ideas don’t need to be hidden behind fancy words that nobody knows. It’s not a vocab test. Unless you’re in school, or are reading for research, there’s no need to make yourself suffer to feel like you're smart. Reading anything makes you smarter.
In this world of short form content, one minute clips and TikTok’s and reals, reading gives you the chance to escape from the brain rot and give rest to your mind. If you are young, in your teens or your 20s, the edge you will get from daily reading is massive. You’ll be the one in 100 peers whose brain is falling in place, not apart. When the kids of today grow into adults who can’t learn and can’t focus, you’ll already be gone. You’ll be out of that crowd and out on a path of your own, and they will be stuck. The fact that you’re here and consuming content that won’t consume you is great news already. The challenge now is keeping it up, committing to breaking the cycle of mindless consumption and working to make yourself better. It’s hard but it’s worth it.
The next time you’re reading a book ask yourself why you’ve chosen the book that you’re reading. Are you reading for you, or for some other reason? There’s plenty of reasons to read that aren’t for enjoyment alone. Think about why you’ve chosen your book, and decide if it’s worth it to you. A book needs commitment. The more that you like what you read, the easier commitment comes. Suddenly t stops being a numbers game and it turns into something you do for enjoyment. Once you start to read things you like, you start to like reading, and you start to be someone who reads. That's a good thing to be
Comments