When we read we acquire knowledge that we do not have, or some may say have not earned. We may have never traveled to India but we can read about it. We may never have measured the roundness of the Earth but we can learn about how it was done. Maybe we have not suffered a great loss but through someone else's experience we can understand their pain better. While it is true that we are borrowing thought from others I do not believe that it detracts from our own ability to reason or our own experiences. In fact I think that being exposed to the thoughts of others helps grow our minds in new directions. Why fight your way down a path which someone else has already cleared? If we had to do this with everything the human race would never make progress. It is only by walking down a well trodden road that one can clearly see the possibility for new pathways. My point is that reading allows us to live a multitude of lives during our own so that we become much more complex individuals.
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron
We are exposed to thought or maybe we even borrow thought for the purpose of growing and maturing ourselves. As long as we are careful not to just regurgitate whatever we read but to think for ourselves based upon what we learn we become intellectuals who utilize the knowledge of others for the purpose of enlightened thought. We must extract the meaning of literature and use it as the basis for new thoughts which we synthesize for ourselves. We don't want to become carbon copies of any particular author, instead we wish to be unique in our thinking. So in conclusion I suppose there is a right and a wrong way to read great works. We can allow ourselves to become indoctrinated by another person's thoughts or we can intelligently assimilate their knowledge and use it to grow and mature our own original thoughts.
Another issue is reading simply for entertainment. Much like watching junk on Television I believe there is junk literature out there which we can end up wasting precious time on. Now there isn't anything wrong with reading a mystery or adventure book every now and again much like there is no harm in watching a comedy or drama occasionally. But when the only works of literature a person picks up are cheesy novels or media hyped books then a disservice is being done to the reader. There are some paradigm shifting books out there which successfully challenge the reader's mind and ask difficult moral or ethical questions. There are books in print which make one ask questions about life, death, and humanity. These are the kind of mental exercises and challenges we should be engaging in and books are one way to encourage this. We must always be thinking in order to keep our minds sharp. If you wish to use your mind often then you should sharpen it daily with great literature, deep conversations, and reflective thought. Without higher thinking we are nothing more than simple animals who only worry about the next entertainment fix between the monotonous sequences of drudgery in daily life. But life doesn't have to be dull. We have only one life and we must strive to make the most of what we are given.
“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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