The Need to Read
By Will Schwalbe
We need to read and to be readers now more than ever.
We shop endlessly for stuff we don't need and then feel oppressed by the clutter that surrounds us. We compare our bodies to the artificial ones in magazines and our lives to the exaggerated ones on television. We keep up with hundreds of acquaintances but rarely see our best friends. We bombard ourselves with video clips and instant messages.
Connectivity is one of the great blessings of the internet era. But constant connectivity can be a curse, encouraging the lesser angels of our nature. None of the nine Muses of classical times bore the names Impatience or Distraction.
Books are uniquely suited to helping us change our relationship to the rhythms and habits of daily life. They speak to us, thoughtfully, one at a time. They demand our attention. And they demand that we briefly put aside our own beliefs and prejudices and listen to someone else's.
Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. Reading is the best way I know to learn how to examine your life. By comparing what you've done to what others have done, and your thoughts and theories and feelings to those of others, you learn about yourself and the world around you. Perhaps that is why reading is one of the few things you do alone that can make you feel less alone.
Reading isn't just a respite from the relentlessness of technology. It isn't just how I escape. It's how I engage. It isn't just a strike against narrowness: It's one of the world's great joys.
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
—Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, Writer, Franz Kafka
所谓书，必须是砍向我们内心冰封大海的斧头。
——弗兰兹·卡夫卡，作家
