Are we the weird ones?
I have always been aware that taking a break from reading is the most pointless thing one can do.
Recently, I have started to switch up my reading list and focus a bit more on non-fiction for a change. I put rereading Balzac and Tolstoy on the back burner and picked up a few books related to politics and religion.
The idea behind all of it was to, somehow, reduce my tolerance for fiction (especially the universal classics) and return to them once I bring myself back into a “neutral” state.
Needless to say, I have failed miserably.
The first book I’ve tried to clean myself with was Winston Churchill’s autobiography. While reading about his childhood set in the background of the English countryside I couldn’t stop thinking about Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. When he was describing his time spent in Cuba, I started to replay Hemingway’s Guerrilla War scenes.
When this started to happen with every single chapter of any non-fiction book I was reading, I got out the pen and paper and tried to explain it to myself.
First things first, we are the weirdos.
After a habit starts to form, our neurons fire off in a different manner. Day after day, when our fingers were flipping the pages and our eyes were moving from left to right, the synapses got stronger and stronger.
When we put down a novel it’s crystal clear to us that whatever is happening on the news or what shows got canceled this week doesn’t matter anymore. The activities we derive pleasure from are differing greatly in comparison to what the average population is doing.
Let’s take a look at the Tik Tok mania which started to take off somewhere around 5 years ago.
Millions of people wired their brains to find meaning in 15 seconds of content splattered among flashes of light and loud sounds.
How can such a person distribute their attention span over 2,000 pages of War and Peace and properly digest the debates taking place on the battlefield or in the ball hall when the aristocracy is trying to defend its position against the newly awakened nihilists?
Or how can someone who has been binge-watching Netflix sit down and read Raskolnikov’s monologues throughout Crime and Punishment when all they can think about is getting their next dopamine fix?
Because of these, I have learned to keep my secret addiction, well, secret.
Often times I’ve got in trouble for not being able to give a good enough answer on why I don’t use social media and why I don’t waste my time in a manner that is considered normal.
With the experiment I mentioned at the beginning, I attempted to get back to planet earth and see what life is like once you’ve turned the last page.
Now, my wish to never give in to peer pressure has been magnified tenfold.
To end on a happier note than usual, let’s go over some positives.
Reduced anxiety
Studies confirmed that this next generation of high school and college students is about to be the most anxious generation in the history of humanity.
At first glance, you might be conflicted, but after putting two and two together, you realize it has nothing to do with them and it has more to do with how they have been brought up.
Careless parents who threw a phone in their face and called it parenting, every adult in their life telling them pleasure is the way to happiness and money should be first regardless of the mental cost, and a school system stuck into passing down some knowledge instead of focusing on the reality around them.
How can these young people shape a new and better world if they are not equipped with the proper tools?
Reading fiction, after an adequate amount of time, will increase your capacity to understand people and situations without having to reflect on them for too long, and, most importantly, you will finally understand yourself.
Concentration capacity increased over time and improved speech.
You will be able to speed up the number of words read within a glance and finish up an X number of pages in a given period of time.
I’ve always preferred to read 20 pages in a sitting and managed to reduce the time frame to about 10–12 minutes, depending on the size of the text, as opposed to 22–25 minutes when I first started to take literature seriously.
And just as the number of words increases, your fluency and delivery will start to take a different form.
The best way to help people is to show them that you know exactly what they are dealing with and make them realize they are not alone, not in the average fashion of are you okay? or can I help with anything?; you will be able to express yourself clearly and convey what it is you want to communicate.
It will become easier to be considered an asset and a friend, and your confidence will become an inherent part of who you are.
