Why Read!

When the television signal or internet goes out, what to do?

In many ways that’s sad and seemingly endemic to the western world. Our personal worlds are both dedicated and addicted to entertainment, information and any visual attraction via the screen whether it’s for games or a test pattern. It’s the light.

In all species light attracts. For a moth, it’s a bulb or a flame; the first one disturbs and excites and the second one, if too close, kills.

Fish are attracted to light. Small creatures investigate any light. Humans are drawn to the spiritual light of being, of awareness, of faith.

I have learned in life that there is an invisible light in books. Everyone should have at least two books in their personal library. One should be of fiction and the other non-fiction. The fiction one should preferably be a classic, but a pulp novel will do for when an author kindles sentences into a story, light emanates from the pyre of words and something is learned.

Even a dictionary or a thesaurus can be enlightening. Try just flipping through one, stopping here and there to read a page, see what you didn’t know and learned.

There is more light engendered in the judicious placement of words than can ever be projected on a screen. Your imagination can conjure more dramatic action than any piece of celluloid or digital agglutination.

Read!