Sometimes, it feels like the place I work is some sort of
dreary cross between Dorothy’s colorless world before she went to Oz and the
ugly, soulless setting of 1984. Don’t
get me wrong: I am extremely blessed to have a full-time job, and I know it
(two years of part-time jobs taught me that much!). Plus, I have learned a
million amazing things in this job that I never would have in a different
environment. It’s nothing I ever imagined for myself, but I am very, very
grateful for it.
Most days.
But some days are just too much. Some days, when I walk
through the gate, it takes every bit of will to make myself ignore the rolls of
barbed wire on the fence, grinning at me like wicked, prickly teeth. My shoes
crunch over thirsty, salt-bleached sidewalks, and as I walk from one squat,
outdated building to another, I stare up at the blue, blue above me sky and try
to suck it right in to fortify my soul against the drabness of row upon row of
office cubes.
That’s why I cover the walls around my desk in poetry. In
pictures. And in the hanging vines of my houseplant that is somehow thriving despite
the complete lack of any direct sunlight. And that’s why I put quotes in the
status bar of my office communicator, where most people put their hours or
their phone extension. It is my small rebellion, in a world of products and
practicality, to whisper something different.
It was a quote from a Wendell Berry poem that got the
attention of a friend of mine. “Ask the
questions that have no answers.” Somehow, this led to a conversation about
books, and anybody who knows me knows I could talk for hours about books.
“I love to read,”
I told him. “And my ‘To Read’ list has been nice and long lately. I love it.”
“Ugh. Not me,” he said. And then he told me he would rather
do something “productive” with his time. “Reading is a form of entertainment,”
he explained, “and it’s just as productive as other forms of entertainment: not
at all. I’ve never heard someone say they read to improve their brain. They
read because they like to read.”
Ummmm... since when is the reason for doing something the determining
factor of its value?
I tried to clarify this with a comparison. I ride my bike
a lot (when the weather is warmer, at least: I don’t bike in this
negative-temperature-nonsense). The reason
I go mountain biking is because I like to do it (I’ve written one
or two
posts about this). When I bike, I’m also exercising. I increase my stamina, my
legs get stronger, my balance improves, etc. etc. Biking has a lot of positive health benefits.
These benefits—these products—are a side effect of me doing
something I enjoy. Not the reason I
do it, but it happens anyway. Like reading. Most people don’t read because they want the products of reading, but they get
the benefits anyway.
And what’s wrong with that? Why does every minute of every
day have to be characterized, and driven, by producing?
But I guess, if you see the world in terms of products, not
processes (or journeys, I think is a better word) this idea of the valuable
journey may be a hard concept to grasp. Because this was my coworker’s next
comment:
“But you’re not accomplishing anything. Reading is just
entertainment. And reading isn’t a particularly special kind of entertainment,
either: anything you get from reading you can get from movies or TV.”
(Where do I even begin???)
When you watch TV or movies, or even a play, you’re being
presented with everything. Your brain is still working, still making
connections as the story unfolds, but much less so than when you are reading.
Movies and TV, they give you
everything. They give you the visuals of character and setting; they use music
and color and camera angle to set the mood. They give, give, give, and you don’t have to do anything in return.
It’s so passive.
When you read, all you’re given is words on a page. Black
and white shapes. That’s it. And then you begin reading and your imagination
can’t help itself: it starts to create.
Scene and character spring up from nothingness, brought about by your will
alone.
I think, when the Bible says we’re made in the image of God,
part of what it means is that we are little creators. We create all kinds of
things: new science and technology, new art and music, new means to live life
and new means to enjoy it. And reading is one of the easiest ways to experience
this innate creativity.
This is not all. I read a beautiful article the other day that talked about one of the less obvious products of
reading (I strongly recommend you follow that link when you’re done here). When
we read, the author says, we grow our understanding—our empathy—for other
people.
My coworker was quite dubious about this one. Creativity and
imagination he could see (although in his mind, neither of these results were
“productive”) but empathy? Open-mindedness? Understanding? “How does reading
give you empathy?” he asked me, and I could hear
the doubt behind the words. “That seems like a huge stretch.”
(I had to bite my tongue to keep from informing him that
maybe, if he read more, it would be less of a stretch to understand.)
Reading gives you empathy because it asks you to suspend
reality. Part of the contract between the reader and the story is that you will
take the words at face value. You will step into the world, into the
characters, and you will leave your ideas about how things work outside.
Although this is most obvious in fantasy and science fiction, where the very
laws of nature are often tossed aside, it is not limited by any one genre. When
you open a book, you accept the world and the characters it presents to you.
You just do. And as you read further,
your mind and your heart are stretched, and you find yourself seeing the world
through another set of eyes. You’re still you… but not wholly. And this compassion comes naturally when
you’re reading, when you’re given, not just the outward lives of a person, but
their inner thoughts as well. The trick, though, is taking this out of the book
world: bringing the understanding and empathy out into the real world and not
picking up your biases again when you close the cover. But the more you
read—the more you stretch your mind and your heart in this way—the easier and
more natural it can become. That article I mentioned earlier puts it this way:
“… reading fiction—when we do so with attention and imagination, when we do so
in a way that suspends disbelief—is one way to suspend that glib belief that
we, each of us, is the ‘realest, most vivid and important person in existence.’
So that being alive to words can mean, put simply, being alive to the people in
your reach and letting them be alive to you.”
I don’t think I had my friend convinced. And maybe not you
either. But if that’s the case, maybe you’ll take a little challenge from me.
Read a book. Read twelve books. Read one each month of the
year, or more if you’re a fast reader, and then tell me if you are the exact
same person you were before. Tell me if you can read twelve good books without
feeling something in your heart, because I don’t think you can. I think your perceptions will be, if not
altered, then at least tested. Your ideas about the world will be colored, as
if you’ve just stepped into Oz. Your understanding will deepen, like Winston
Smith’s... just don’t let yourself fall back into the old, smaller world.
I think you might be surprised.
And if you had to Google “Winston Smith”, you might want to
start your 12 months of reading with George Orwell’s 1984.
Poetry as Creation: A Manifesto
1 In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering
over the waters. – Genesis 1:1-2
And then, God twirled his little finger in the mush that was
the earth and he wrote words, beautiful words.
And then the mush bulged, and with a flick of a divine
finger, was flung up into the most beautiful words- oh, how beautiful!
(sparkling adjectives, verbs
that thrummed with life, and nouns that for the first and only time actually
were what they claimed to be!)
Little gods observe this now-
the
sparks still flashing, if a little dulled-down,
the
verbs still humming, albeit a little unsteadily,
the
nouns still themselves, still going about their grimed-up lives-
and the little gods try to stir all of this up into beauty
that bursts and pops like it used to, like it does
when God writes poetry.
