Reading requires you to create a world in your mind from the text, and I believe this spur to your imagination prepares you to see a different future for yourself.
Your reading needs to be diverse, many people read every day but with such a narrow focus their minds are running on cruise control as their eyes flit across the page. Without a diversity of stories and views in your reading, the mind continually reinforces your current ideas. You stop questioning yourself and become unable to imagine a different future.
A Creative Mind
When I embarked on a Masters program in 1998, my library bulged with fiction, history and scientific theory that I read voraciously over my lifetime. During my studies, the university dictated an immense volume of texts to be read, and fiction disappeared from my reading lists as I strove to understand the complexities of political science, international relations and modern history. When I graduated, I continued to only read non-fiction and then slowly even those books started to sit forlornly on the shelf as my passion for reading waned. After a lifetime of reading, I gradually retreated into world devoid of books that I filled with games and television.
My mistake? I stopped reading for pleasure, the joy of exploring a new world in my mind had disappeared under facts, theories and academic doubletalk. Facts and theories are good academic pursuits but we are creative beings, to be fulfilled we need to make the leap from theory to a future state. Fiction helps develops your creative mind, and allows you to imagine different futures. Futures that you can pursue to make your life worth living for you.
Reading for Pleasure
I have embraced fiction again, and it features prominently in my reading list for 2012. I started with The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo so I could compare my vision with the Hollywood version released this week in Australia. As I watched the movie my mind ran its version in parallel, as if I had already seen the movie. Right now I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the opening chapter catapulted straight out on to the open road, riding a motorcycle with my wife and friends. This is a vision that I lost sight of a decade ago, and now the simple words of Robert Pirsig are drawing back to the highway. By choosing to read books that give me pleasure I have found myself reading more than watching television-a black hole that much of my life has been sucked into-and my thoughts are turning to new futures, new possibilities. It may be hedonistic but enjoyment is the catalyst for developing an enduring habit, and I am very happy to be enjoying books again.
An Enriched Future
Every book I read is opening my mind to new ideas, new possibilities and new futures, I already feel that I have enriched my year by rediscovering my love of fiction. I plan to read philosophy, memoirs and maybe a little non-fiction throughout the year, and use those texts to adapt my projects and embrace the endless possibilities. Books enrich our ideas like independent travel frees us from the constraints of organised tourism. While coaches full of tourists are guided from one experience to another, the independent traveller (tourist) follows a similar but divergent path. They stay longer when it pleases them or take a different direction if it doesn’t. Readers have the same advantage, lingering over a passage or rereading a page to understand the plot or form an idea while moviegoers take a coach ride through the story, guided by the director’s vision. Both are enjoyable but film does not challenge you to imagine the future, you just watch it emerge and that is not a metaphor for the life I want to lead, an enriching life full of potential and wonder based on my ideas and ideals.
Reading a variety of genres enriches your mind, challenges your preconceptions and reveals new ideas for your exploration. So take the time to read, read every day and let your imagine run free with the words.