What does reading mean to you? We don’t ask ourselves that question very often, or ever. I think that we should. I am sure that some people can reduce their meaning down to a single crystalline concept. Or a poetic sentence of such breathtaking beauty that it would fit wonderfully in a greeting card to a new reader.
I also know that isn’t me. Reading for me is far too complex, too intertwined with my everyday life. My work life involves writing and reading. My personal life involves writing and reading. Two sentences so similar that they seem to be the same, but in reality they are opposite ends of a spectrum.
At work, my writing is to the point, factual, and minimalized. If I can illuminate the result with fewer word, than that is exactly what happens.
At home, my writing is passionate, bizarre, fanciful, frightening, and detailed. If something I am writing needs one word then ten words will do!
I live in a world of written worlds. Worlds often at extremes from each other, but they always transfer meaning. Whether that meaning is simple facts or the meaning is the description of the color of a sunrise in an alien world.
Meaning is often lost in our world today. How often have we heard, “I didn’t mean that.” Or “That’s not what I meant.” We can, and often do, lose our perspective of meaning when our emotions are engaged before our minds. This is as true when you read a menu at a restaurant or when you read a political editorial. Both are written to engage your emotions before your mind. Both come with the potential for buyer’s remorse.
I hope what I have written here will cause you to seek the meaning in what you are reading and to seek the meaning as to why you read.
Now go out and read something. Something with meaning, but keep the buyer’s remorse to a minimum.
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