When you read more, life expands. Here’s how.
1. You will find a safe way to escape when your own life is depressing, overwhelming, or just boring.
No need to turn to drugs or alcohol. Save your money. Get a library card, or start downloading some of those thousands of ebooks in the public domain. Get wrapped up in a story. Get lost in another world. Get into a character’s head and out of your own.
2. You find out that you have a family.
Whether you’re a literal orphan or you simply feel like you totally don’t fit into the family you’ve got, becoming an avid reader is a way to find the family you can fit into.
It’s a worldwide, totally open, and really awesome family.
3. You will become part of a timeless, global conversation.
Books are the way that the past communicates with us. And books are the way that we communicate across cultures and national boundaries, across social lines and class divisions.
Books let us enter into each other’s lives and worlds in a completely unobtrusive but immersive way. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.
4. You will learn to talk pretty.
Reading is the most painless way to improve your vocabulary, spelling, and grammatical proficiency.
Did you catch how I just spelled “proficiency” without even looking it up?
Yeah. That comes from reading.
5. You will look forward to lines, layovers, and waiting rooms.
This could be the biggest turning point of your life, actually. Instead of tapping your foot impatiently, huffing and sighing like dyspeptic cow, or otherwise displaying your wrath and frustration in a socially acceptable way, you can simply… read.
Whatever book you’re currently lost in should be with you, in your pocket or purse. Pull it out and you’ve got entertainment, companionship, and intellectual stimulation. All in one handy portable package.
6. You will be a nicer person.
You might not care about being a nicer person, but the other people in your life probably do care.
Reading, as my friend Christine put it, “allows me to experience another’s emotions, which in turn makes me more sensitive to those around me.”
And she’s right.
7. You will learn stuff.
Even if all you read is fiction, you can learn quite a lot about cultural influence, relationships, history, fear, human psychology, the various expressions of spirituality, the effects of war, the way robots will definitely take over the world, and how superheroes manage to keep their capes clean.
All very useful information.
8. You will discover that you were dumber than you knew.
In the time prior to your avid reading addiction (also known as “The Years Which Must Not Be Named”), you thought you had a pretty open mind, didn’t you?
Go ahead, you can admit it. I won’t laugh.
9. You will be more creative.
As you fill your mind with fresh material from all these books, something wonderful starts happening.
Your mind wakes up.
Creativity is really all about making connections. The creative people in life, the ones we admire for their ingenuity, are the ones who can make those connections really well. They have a broad database of knowledge, and they don’t bother keeping the categories separate. They let poetry seep into science. They let faith and history hang out together.
10. You will become more imaginative and less afraid of being weird.
When you read books that are the product of someone else’s imagination, you start to trust your own imagination, and use it.
What a great idea! Using that brain, in all of its crazy, unnerving, glorious potentiality.
