The Lost Art of Reading

Immersing myself in a book was once so easy.

Reading as a lost art may sound strange, after all, you’re literally reading this article right now, and in order for me to write it, I had to write and read it, but let’s get realistic for a second.

There was a point in time when many of us took way more pride in being avid readers, and thoughtfully reading.

For me, reading was essential, especially understanding that being an avid writer came bliss. I’d often find myself reading as a mechanism to cope with certain life circumstances and situations. Therefore, very early on, I noticed that my love for writing, and for words, in general, had been rooted in my love of reading. How I’d get lost and caught in narratives and the turns of the argument, and in the novels that I was reading. I’d find myself losing myself, as I spent hours strolling through long stretches of prose. Since, I’ve always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through bettering my practices, heartbreak, death, and in moments where I felt my most fulfilled and wanted to continue that journey.

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

- James Baldwin

I found myself reading so frequently when experiencing and overcoming trauma because it simply allowed me to escape. I also found myself reading through ecstatic happiness because it allowed me to maintain. The real world dissolved and in those moments I was free to drift into fantasy, living a thousand lives, each more powerful, knowledgeable, more real than my own phases and I have always read this way.

Although these days, I’m more driven by the idea of true intimacy, and the one-to-one attention that books actually require, they aren’t just tools to lose ourselves in and retreat from but rather to understand, be enlightened by & to interact with.

Let’s explore this theory a bit more…

Is Reading an Art?

We begin to consider reading as an art when we think of what it is that we read.

Informational reading and online skimming require only simple decoding; however, our reading of choice and imaginative literature involves more complex thinking than basic scrutinies. Receptively reading books, journal pieces, articles, poems, etc., makes us an active participant in what it is we are choosing to read. As an author creates their art, a work of literature, a reader then receives and responds to it, empowering participation, even if it is only mentally and emotionally, taking in whatever may and or may not resonate, and then applying it to our own experiences, perspectives and lives.

We can often discover the true power of creativity within the context of the things we read and are drawn to within literature, which can then be defined as taking our interest, infatuation, and being seen as art.

Is Reading Lost?

In comparison to the average of five to six (and if not more) hours, spent daily on digital media, many people believe technology has detrimental effects on reading, considering many people also feel as if they find themselves losing interest, and not being able to truly focus attention when reading. Before I began bettering my own practices again and getting into the habit of reading, as I once did as a child, my concentration would often start to drift after a few pages. I’d get fidgety, lose my place in the book, and begin looking for something else to do, having the sudden urge to check my phone, etc. I feel as if I was always dragging my wayward brain back to the text, and the deep reading that once came so naturally had obviously become a struggle.

While the internet offers many wonderful benefits to our lives, it’s important to consider how our relationship with technology is changing the way we interact, communicate, and even think. As a writer, I’ve been particularly interested in how our reading habits have shifted the way we gather and process information. I suspect we are becoming a society that rarely allows ourselves to slow down enough to think and contemplate. It’s difficult to spend time reading books, blogs, God’s Word, etc.—when there are so many others factors that call for our attention. It requires a strong will in order to force ourselves to read something longer than a few hundred words & to not only study but apply what it is we are reading, to be able to summon our will and discipline ourselves to slow down and focus on what really matters, nonetheless it is possible.

In today’s technology-driven culture, as sad as it is to be true, reading has become a lost art. Period. Not for all, but for many. Recovering this lost art explores the importance of reading, regardless of our subject(s) of choice, and though, many of us are already aware of how too much technology and Internet use can cause negative damage and changes to the brain, its so deeply embedded into our lives and routines.

Plus, we look for instant gratifications in many aspects of our lives, and understandably so, after being over-stimulated for so long. Because in actuality, technology causes many of us to have much shorter attention spans; therefore, the easiness of deep readings we once did, no longer is.

It’s almost as if our minds have fixated expectations on how to process, and receive information, as everything on the Internet feels as if it is at the touch of a finger. While some things, reading being one, demands us to learn at a slower pace.

Source

So what happened?

It isn’t a failure of desire, so to say, as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but our focus: the ability to still the mind to inhabit someone else’s perspective long enough to intrigue, and enighten us, and to go against our own fixated current beliefs.

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to truly merge with the consciousness of information being expressed, without being able to actually respond. It forces us to be true listeners. Though we physically possess the books that we read, animating the waiting stillness of the language that each book speaks, they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations. The way books enlarge us by giving us direct access to experiences we’ve yet to even experience, or connecting ways for us to observe knowledge and experiences we may have already experienced, putting it to words, on paper, in the physical, for us to see. However, in order for this to work, we need a certain mind-silence, acceptance, an ability to filter out noise, and a slain ego of what we feel to already be true.

“You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

- James Baldwin

Today, it seems much easier to fall into instant gratification. It is not contemplation that we seek but an odd sort of temporary distraction masquerading as fulfillment, as opposed to the information that truly assists and sticks with us forever. Plus its true, our attention is our highest currency, thus being so many biases in the mass media, in a sense controlling us by grasping our attention and forcing us to diet and focus on subjects of their benefit, but that’s a completely different article, for a completely different day, in which will soon be written….