I would like to avoid sounding like a disgruntled Neo-Luddite, but we really do need to start putting our phones away more often. These 2 x 4 inch screens more effectively capture our attention than practically anything else in our surroundings, which is a bit of a problem. Now I am in no position to preach about this, since I too spend far too much time scrolling through Facebook and Instagram when I should definitely be doing something much more productive with my time. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we could just find a better endeavor that lets us spend a study break within a different kind of alternate reality? This is why I think it’s time that this generation revisits a lost art: reading books. While it may seem quite difficult to find time for leisurely reading with our oppressive workloads, I believe that we should all be able to make time by cutting down on our many daily visits to social media sites.
I know there are people who do not enjoy reading as much as I do, but I would still like to hope that everyone is able to find it at least a little pleasurable. Unfortunately our high school education systems have done us a serious disservice by squeezing the life out of our assigned books with endless discussions, tests and overdrawn analyses. Based on some of my own grim experiences from my high school English classes, I can say that the purpose of reading is not to invoke abstract symbolism from each word to the point where the reader completely loses interest. The real joy of reading comes from when written words have the ability to make us feel something, when we can interpret someone else’s expressions and make them our own. When was the last time you opened a book and felt the sense of thrill and excitment that only the beginning of an epic journey can invoke? When was the last time you finished a book and felt the sweet sadness of ending your sojourn in a strange world filled with the characters you’d truly come to love? We obviously cannot experience this with every book we read, which is why it is important to go beyond the scope of our high school reading lists and explore something new. We have all been assigned to read The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies and 1984 at some point, and while some of us may have enjoyed them in a classroom setting, it’s time to read something simply because we want to read it. Once we find a book that we like, we don't want to put it down because life won’t be the same until we read the next page.
I just want myself and people my age in general to experience this joy more often. I take a look around Levering at lunchtime, and I see people holding their sandwiches in one hand and their phones in the other. So much of our daily life is centered around the screens that we must have forgotten what it’s like to feel the pages. Why not hold a book instead of a phone? Why not abandon scanning through the lives of others and immerse yourself in a world of your own? That’s what reading a book can accomplish, and it’s something that we all need to do more.
