The Joy of Reading
Explore Different Worlds - Become Different People - by Ken Sorensen
One of the true pleasures of life is to read something of your choice simply because you want to. The joy of reading comes with stimulation on so many levels. I recently found a quote (I don’t know who to attribute it to) about reading that says: “Books are not about passing time. They are about other lives, other worlds. Once you have tasted enough of them, you find your own life grows deeper. No more exciting perhaps, but richer. Literature doesn’t change your circumstances; it changes the way you see them.” Simply put, reading takes you to worlds you will never inhabit.
There was another quote that I recently ran onto about reading from Dave Eggers when he said: “Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying, ‘let’s not forget this.’ One of the greatest parts of reading a book is that I become that individual. I get to walk streets throughout history. I get to see through the eyes of someone else what their life and their world is all about. I get to be D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers and I get to stand up against the evil on the day. I get to be Michelangelo laying on his back 65’ in the air on scaffolding and painting the Sistine Chapel. I get to be Queen Elizabeth I when facing the Spanish Armada in 1588 when she told her people: “I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of an English King. Join me and defend England” and they did. I get to be Paul Revere as he rode through “every Middlesex Village and farm yelling the British are coming” and the farmers responded. I get to be Abraham Lincoln giving the greatest speech ever given in America at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and remind America “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom” and we got rid of slavery. In his 2nd Inaugural Speech Lincoln asked us to find “the better angels of our nature” and we are still looking for those angels. I get to be Winston Churchill rallying England to bring back the soldiers that were trapped at Dunkirk and the English did. I get to say those immortal words of John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1960 at his inaugural speech when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country.” He went on to say: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of mankind.”
No matter our age … we have such great journeys to go on when we read!