Rediscovering Reading

It had been like an accumulation of tiny changes within me - little unnoticeable pieces of change that took place in me every day.

One day, it suddenly hit me with the realisation that I have lost a capacity I very much treasure: the capacity to read properly.

I realise I no longer read books from front to back. I start one book after another, read a few pages, and leave it lying about - both physically and electronically. Where I live, where I study, littered with unfinished books.

I found that when I read, I had a natural urge to avoid digest every sentence - my eyes impulsively search for the keywords in paragraphs that suggest the section to be most interesting, and start there. When the writing starts to get tedious, my eyes start wandering again around the page. I get impatient when it feels that the author is beating around the bush, and when I sense that he or she isn't arriving to the conclusion in the shortest and most direct way possible.

Maybe it is the Internet, if I have to find a scapegoat for my bad habits; I have grown accustomed to absorbing information in a style where the reader actively searches for the information he or she wants to read, rather than taking it all in passively. If a book isn't giving you what you need, just search for another one online.

On second thoughts, perhaps activeness-passiveness isn't really the issue. Perhaps it is more the deterioration of patience and concentration; the patience needed to wait till the chapter finishes, and the concentration not to escape to another screen as you are reading a book. Since my adolescence and increasingly so by the time I reached adulthood, day by day I had become more used to living amongst distractions - smartphones, e-readers, laptops, tablets, screens, screens and more screens everywhere; an endless stream of messages, emails, and notifications.

Thus when I managed to execute the idea of picking up a paperback book and disciplining myself to read every single line without skimming and jumping into another screen, there was almost a sense of serendipity. It was surprisingly soothing, in a way that reading in such a way gradually channels away all the stress from the modern life. I highly recommend it.