The Wisdom of Reading
Published in PERENNIAL — Ancient Lessons for Modern Life
3 days ago (Medium.com)
Tobreak bread with the dead may sound like odd (or obvious) advice. But strangely, the birth of Stoicism started with this type of suggestion. As legend has it, when Zeno (the founder of Stoicism) was a young man, the Oracle told him, “To live the best life, you should have conversations with the dead.”
The oracle was referring to reading. But not just any books — books written by writers that have long passed. Books that have stood the test of time.
Reading as a path to the good life is an ancient one. Even Socrates — who did not write anything down himself — stressed the wisdom of reading. He suggested improving ourselves through other men’s writings to come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Reading the lives of others helps us discern how to live our own.
The British writer C.S. Lewis may have put it best,
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense, but he inhabits a tiny world. … The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. The reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented.
Although it is not enough to read. We must attempt to read well.
To read well is not to scour books for lessons on what to think. Instead, to read well is to be formed in how to think, explains Karen Swallow Prior (a previous podcast guest). Reading well requires time and attention.
Similarly, the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler illustrated this point nicely in his classic, How to Read a Book,
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect, a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analyzing yourself.
However, often in life, we pick up bad habits around reading.
Here are a few practical tips to remember: (1) Don’t be afraid to read slowly. Good books take time; instead of speed reading — try deep reading. (2) Don’t be afraid to write in books. Read with a pen, pencil, or highlighter in hand. (3) Don’t be afraid to read books again and again. As Seneca put it in a letter to Lucilius, “Stay with a limited number of writers,” be wary of reading too widely.
It is easy to forget how special books actually are.
They are so readily available in modern life. It can be difficult to imagine a time when books were transcribed by hand. The next time you have a book in your hands, consider reflecting on the lives that may have read it. What they might have been dealing with — the answers they may have been searching for.
Books “break the shackles of time,” stressed the astronomer Carl Sagan,
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Reading well adds to our life — but not in the way a tool from the hardware store (or a new piece of technology) adds to our life. Reading is not a life hack. Reading is a perennial habit (or a lifelong practice).
To break bread with the dead is to eat and drink deeply from good books. “To have conversations with the finest minds of past centuries,” in the words of Rene Descartes. Reading well is a royal road to understanding ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
P.S. If you like daily meditations on the art of living, check out the Perennial Meditations newsletter.
·Editor for PERENNIAL — Ancient Lessons for Modern Life
Founder at Perennial Leader Project | Host of In Search of Wisdom Podcast | Reflections on wisdom and life. Say hello: JW@perennialleader.comFollow