Can you picture your long-ago bedroom when you were about twelve years old?
Here’s mine:
A single bed over which my mother had very helpfully affixed a reading lamp (thank you, Mama!). A desk for doing homework. Two small bookcases brimming with my favorite books, perhaps fifty or sixty, all of which I’d read at least once. A view of the Saco River, a view of stars, an oak branch that brushed one window and a beech branch that brushed another. A blissful little chamber in which I read and dreamed and wrote poems and imagined my life to come.
Today I live in a house that contains several hundred books (at least) and I’ve read most but not all of them; the picture above shows my poetry bookcase with most, but not all, of the poetry in my collection. I also have a Kindle account crammed with ebooks. And like everyone else, I have access to an endless ocean of videos, audios, articles, memes, online classes, helpful pdfs, and a million other items of “content” that promise to entertain, enlighten, improve, or enrich me.
This is not an essay about how there’s too much now and how that old simplicity was better for us. Those were different times with different challenges.
I mean, it’s hard to believe that in those days we often had to wait a week to go to the library to look up something in a reference book. Had you offered me all this – I’ll call it plenitude – at that time, I would have yowled with joy and spun in dizzy circles. Bring it on! Bring it all on!
The challenge today is akin to being shown into the world’s largest candy store and handed a basket: help yourself. How do you choose? How do you avoid ending up with a terrible bellyache? Or worse – diabetes?
If you’re like me, and I strongly suspect you are, you are curious, excitable, eager, and easily intrigued. You want to read, watch, and listen to everything. And yet, as the old saying goes: so many books, so little time.
For all our sakes, I want to offer a few preliminary ideas intended to cultivate discernment, yes, but also a certain lightness, self-trust, and that wonderful feeling: I got exactly what I came for.
A few ways to nibble
I like to “visit” my books randomly.
I walk among them and when one beckons, I open it up, turn a few pages, note what catches my eye, take in a color, idea, or energy, and then off I go, intrigued, or buoyed, or less alone. This little nibble gives me sustenance to carry into the day.
As for longer commitments – I can usually tell pretty quickly if I’m willing to go the distance with what I’m reading and if it will feel, in my very subjective view, “worth it.” To get to this point, I’ve had to adopt the idea that my time is valuable and that my attention is precious; I’m aware that those ideas might be old hat for many other readers, but if not, let me encourage you to claim them for yourself immediately. With that in mind, I’m free to pick up anything and take a taste, trusting that I don’t have to gobble the whole thing. Which brings me to my next idea:
Let go of finishing
There are no awards for finishing a book, an essay, a poem, a video, or anything else. This is mis-spent courtesy. It’s like the clean-plate club for reading – a childhood idea that needs to be let go. If you’re trudging, if you’re grimly determined, if you’re just in it for the gold star of finishing, be merciful and lay it aside, whatever it is. This is a hard one to get over, but it will change your life.
Discern the needs of today and meet them
Among the reasons that impel me to read: to be encouraged, to be challenged, to be expanded, to be informed, to sate a curiosity, to take shelter, to meet my own kind, to laugh, to encounter an aspect of myself for which I have only a vague notion, and a billion billion more.
I come to reading every time looking for something. It’s an act of self-kindness to acknowledge that need and to choose from what’s available what will best answer that call. It helps here to know your own library (frequent nibbling as described above makes this possible).
It also helps to regard your books as you do your friends. I “call up” Anne Fadiman for one thing and go walking with John Keats for another. If I want old-school adventure I know where to turn. If I want reassurance, there are a half-dozen titles that can medicate me more surely than anything a doctor could prescribe.
Take one thing – and off you go
Whatever you read, there is always at least one gem – an idea or even a single word that can bring you to life. It’s a reader’s spiritual discipline to find that one gold coin. In that way, there is no such thing as wasted time because even a negative example is worthwhile.
But gracious, one gleaming possibility can change everything. One sentence can literally change our chemistry and make possible an entirely new set of actions and outcomes. Ideas do change lives. Every day!
My suggestion is that we seek that kindling and aliveness in everything we consume, and equally, that we commit to finding it.
Two readers as one
I’m a world away from that 12-year-old self, but some things never change. Decades, apart, we still need many of the same things: inspiration, gentleness, impetus to grow, information, a sense of the adventures to be had in the world and in my ow life, good company and affection.
I read today in concert with that hungry younger self. She got me started on this path of reading and learning after all. I’m grateful to her.
From my current book-rich life, I hand her a story I know will enchant her. She turns on the light over her bed, sure she will find in it exactly what she needs. And with two branches brushing the window and stars shining over the river, deep into the night she reads.
PS – If you’re looking for an idea to inspire you today, I have a present for you. Go to this page – Free Teaching and Gifts – Kate Chadbourne – and scroll to the bottom. There, you’ll find four books which contain encouragement and good company and some ideas that might help you on your adventures. They’re all free and you don’t have to share your email address or anything like that. Just download them with my compliments!
