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Why do I read? It has the potential for transforming how I think and feel
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD
For me, reading is like breathing. Often I will speed through great stretches of text with effortlessness. The actual act of reading is transparent. I have often compared it with being able to sight read music and play the piano. The notes on the page drop from consciousness as the pianist feels drawn effortlessly into the world of the music. The more interesting reading gets, the more I feel I’m not reading anymore. You stop reading the words, sentences, and paragraphs and completely living inside the situation. It’s as if you have sunk through the pages of the book and find yourself in the world on the other side of the book, like walking through a mirror and now participating. The words have disappeared.
I have been fascinated by a book entitled Reading Matters (Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CT, 2006). In this book, Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Lynne McKechnie, and Paulette M. Rothbauer discuss the reading experience. As I read their description, I felt as though they were describing me, so I have incorporated their information into this essay, without quotation marks, as if it were my own.
Some people call my kind of reading deep enjoyment or joy. Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi, the psychologist who studies states of “optimal experience” calls it flow. This is a condition of total involvement with life in which people feel creative and engaged. Flow occurs at the point in my state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, that is, when I want to pursue reading for its own sake. It is when reading is so enjoyable that nothing else seems to matter and everyday concerns disappear. This experience is not unusual. Based on data collected from thousands of individuals, Csikszentimihalyi found that among the many intellectual pursuits available, “reading is currently perhaps the most often mentioned flow activity around the world” (Flow (New York), 1990, p. 117).
So often when I am reading I am seduced, enthralled, and caught up in what can only be described as a magic spell. It is as if I am overpowered by the text and unable—I would say unwilling—to maintain a critical distance. Sometimes the feeling comes in a rush. I will be reading along, and suddenly a word or phrase or scene enlarges before my eyes, and soon everything around me is just so much fuzzy background. The phone can ring, the toast can burn, the doorbell can ring, but to me, they are all in a distant dream. So, it seems, reading for me is not a matter of mind only; the emotional dimension of reading is just as—if not in many cases—even more important.
When I went to the University of Michigan as both an undergraduate and graduate student, one of my jobs was working in the graduate library. Because I was there most days, I discovered carrels hidden way back in the stacks where, along the dark walls of the most out-of-the-way areas, I could find secluded, enclosed spaces where I could not be found or interrupted. Those spaces were not just physical surroundings, they offered a mental space as well that prepared me for the complete reading experience—just as if you had snatched a reading space from under the basement stairs, behind the closet door, under the dining room table, in the bathtub, or under the bed covers by flashlight. It was a snugly kind of ideal.
Part of my pleasure in reading has always been my delight in language. There is an aesthetic pleasure of appreciating language skillfully used. Sometimes I make a list of the rare words I encounter. Sometimes, in books that I own or when I am reading at the computer, I will mark passages, or type passages, where language has been used with particular grace. I have always had a curiosity about language. I enjoy it. I try to use it with feeling and flair when I write or talk, tell jokes, or write speeches or essays.
It may be that my love affair with language turned me into a writer. When I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I made English my minor, and I took a number of additional English courses to prepare me (just in case—as a back-up) for teaching speech in high school. Because I had a teaching certificate, and I had no idea what I would be doing with a major in speech, I felt that such a minor would add additional substance and depth to my major. It turns out that it was a wise choice with respect to both my personal interests and future as a writer.
Reading gives me something that can’t be experienced any other way. Certainly, reading a lot improves my level of literacy, but, too, it increases my vocabulary, helps me in ordinary, everyday conversations, and assists me in becoming a better writer. Reading is part of my identity. For me, reading is to live. It is almost a necessity. If I were stuck on a desert without books, I would go crazy. My freedom to read is absolutely sacred. It even becomes like eating and sleeping—I have to do it. I’d go nuts if I couldn’t. It’s a passion, and I can’t deny it.
Perhaps it’s the teacher in me because, essentially, I read to learn. That is not to say that I only read books of a strictly educational nature. But, whenever I read, I feel as though I’m assimilating what I read into a one-person folk memory. One of the beauties, I have discovered, of being a textbook writer in the speech-communication discipline is that almost everything in the world can relate. Thus, I can read widely and still be connected to my discipline. Another aspect, of course, is the continuous need to find examples. I read widely because I never know what nugget, scrap, or tasty snack will be hidden around the next literary corner. I am always searching, foraging, rooting around, rummaging and casting about for that elusive insight, evasive awareness, or intangible vision. To me, that is the mark of a great writer: to be able to bring to readers an understanding, realization, appreciation, or insight previously unpossessed.
Life without reading would be empty, boring, suffocating, an intellectual wasteland—like dementia, I would be dying. Not being able to read would be upsetting, catastrophic, and unimaginably horrible—like not being able to see color. Books give me comfort and a way of recharging my batteries. They help me clarify my feelings, change my way of thinking about things, help me think through problems, and help me make decisions. They give me a sense of mastery and control and broaden my horizons. Reading makes me feel better about myself, reassures me that I am normal, puts me in touch with a larger, more spacious world, both stimulates me and calms me down, provides me with a form of engagement with the world, and transforms how I think and feel.
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Why do I read? It has the potential for transforming how I think and feel
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Trying to understand everything
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Being “handy” is a quality that never ceases to be useful
Trying to understand everything
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD
Perhaps I was too easily influenced; however, my parents, teachers, and
ministers always impressed me as I was growing up with how much they knew.
They just seemed to have all the answers, and because of that they not only
had my attention and respect, but also my admiration. I couldn’t believe the
expertise of authors when I read books. When I was young—much of the way
through high school and college, too—I placed authors on a pedestal. I
didn’t just think highly of them; I revered, even worshiped them. It was
only four years after completing graduate school that I was asked if I was
interested in writing a textbook, and both my co-author and publishing
company had to convince me that I was now in a position to approach such a
task. It was hard for me to believe that I had acquired that level of
expertise because, for me, it meant taking my place at the same noble and
lofty height at which I had placed the many authors I had read.
To illustrate how common the experience is—placing parents, teachers,
ministers, and especially authors on a knowledge pedestal—a student came
down to the front of the lecture hall after one of my lectures and asked me,
“Do you know everything there is to know about speech communication?” The
question shocked me at first because of the surprise factor. It seemed to
have come from nowhere. But it shocked me, because in my mind I had resolved
that issue, and many times when I have worked through ideas, I think others
have come to similar conclusions.
Now, thinking of this situation in retrospect, it revealed the naiveté of
the student, but, more importantly, how being in the position of director
and lecturer of the course and the author of the textbooks could cause a
student to think I knew everything.
I treated the student’s question and the questioner with the utmost care.
First, I wanted to treat him with the respect and dignity he deserved, of
course, but I wanted to make sure I left him with the feeling that I was,
indeed, open to any future questions he chose to ask. Second, I wanted to
instruct him, too, without belittling,
deprecating, or trivializing his question. Thus, I began slowly.
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Why do I read? It has the potential for transforming how I think and feel
>
Trying to understand everything
>
Being “handy” is a quality that never ceases to be useful
Being “handy” is a quality that never ceases to be useful
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD
In the first house my wife and I owned, I had to transform the basement
to accommodate a growing family and create a family room. We gained a large
storage room, two bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a spacious laundry room for
drying clothes and ironing them as well. Rather than hire help, I did all
the work myself including using a jackhammer on the cement floor to lay the
drain pipes for the bathroom and doing all the electrical work. I didn’t
have all the tools I needed, but I began purchasing them as required, and
many of those I still have today.
I have never thought of myself as “handy,” and when I am asked, “Are you
handy?,” my reply has always been, “Not really, but I know the difference
between a screwdriver and a hammer.” I’m probably a bit better than that
(especially now), but what ability I have I give full credit to my father.
Now, he was handy!
Although I seldom helped him, I was always fascinated with his work, and I
loved his tools—a full workbench mostly of Craftsman tools. He could do
anything that needed fixing. Also, I loved using his tools, and when I
finished using one, I always returned it to exactly the place where I found
it. I knew he loved his tools, and I knew he would know in a second if one
was missing. He kept a clean work area, and he was a saver, so he always had
extra wood, nails, screws, and small parts neatly stored where he could find
them.
One never really knows the impressions that all those things have on a young
boy growing up. The only time I knew how important the impressions he made
on me were was when I began doing projects myself—long after I had moved out
of the family home.
When I was in graduate school, for example, before I had accumulated any
tools, my wife and I had the need for more storage and counter space in the
kitchen of our old rented apartment within a couple of blocks of Indiana
University. I measured the space next to the stove, and I walked across town
to the lumberyard where I purchased the wood, and screws and after having
the wood cut at the
store, lugged them back to the apartment in the snow where I assembled and
painted the cabinet. That cabinet now holds cans of paint in the barn behind
our house.
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>
Why do I read? It has the potential for transforming how I think and feel
>
Trying to understand everything
>
Being “handy” is a quality that never ceases to be useful
