The Rewards of Reading

I recently have a visit from a good friend who told me he has returned to 'reading.' This good friend of mine, one of the few non-relative my own age, whom I admired and respected, is wise for his age. Wit seems to flow from him. Which is the reason why I like conversing with him. Now I know why he is so knowledgeable. It is because he reads! A lot. . .

The ability to read is truly vital. Knowledge in various disciplines is access through reading. One who is handicapped in reading is deprived of this medium of knowledge.

It is through reading that all the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that delighted mankind for centuries are made available for us at negligible cost. Reading is worth one's effort, worth the little expenses it may entail, if any.

Reading offers many rewards. Below are some of the more important ones:

1. Reading makes us well-informed.

Through reading, we gain access to various areas of knowledge, where we learn the mistakes committed by men before us and, in the process, learn some recipes for human success. Through reading we may gain insights which will help us how to be happy when sad, how to grow thin when fat, even how to lose wrinkles and stay forever young, if that is at all possible.

2. Reading is a worthwhile form of recreation.

Reading is much, soooo much better than looking, for hours on end, at what is being shown on an 'idiot box,' also known as a TV set (why is it called 'set' anyway? there obviously is only one that I see!).Reading is more fun. An illustrious man once said that 'the most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never learned the soul satisfying pleasure of reading good books.' This newbie lady blogger totally agrees.

3. Reading can be a source of inspiration.

Books we read provides us with a vision of the better-yet-to-be which is the very stuff of inspiration. Given inspiration, our lives are lived under the light of distant stars, foreseeing in our present work, the judgment of generations yet to come, as we imagine it to be. Reading makes us creatures of imagination and as such, we will be made to 'taste the bliss of every heaven and felt the pang of every hell.'

4. Reading can be a form of therapy.

There are instances when the things in our world are too much for us to bear and we need a grievance drainage. Reading furnishes us a form of sublimation. Sublimation is a way of draining-off our malevolence upon a substitute object. What numerous substitute objects reading affords us! The villain in a novel, for instance, will give us somebody to be 'angry' at, thereby sparing those around us our anger.

These, folks are just a few of the rewards which can be had from reading.