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Today's
quotation:
The
greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it
consoles,
it distracts, it excites, it gives you a knowledge of the world
and
experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
Elizabeth Hardwick
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Today's
Meditation:
Reading is
such a wonderful way to expand our minds and hearts that
it's somewhat amazing that so few of us make time for it
regularly. We get caught up with life, with work,
with family, with everything, and we find that we don't
have time to sit down for a couple of hours with a good
novel or a good book about some topic that truly interests
us. The time we spend reading, though, can be some
of the most valuable time of our lives-- yet while we find
that it's necessary to watch certain shows every week, we
don't feel the same need to read.
There
are, of course, many people who read regularly. They
allow themselves to learn about new topics, experience new
ideas, and follow exciting and fascinating stories.
They learn how different characters deal with life
situations, and they feel sympathy for the good guys and
antipathy for the bad. They experience joy and fear
and dread and relief as their characters-- fictional and
real-life-- make their ways through trials and conflicts
that we can only imagine.
I
know that reading has enriched my life immensely, and I
often wish that I had more time to read. The
benefits of reading are immense, yet I find myself often
doing other things that don't have nearly as many benefits
for me, simply because that's where I am in life, and this
class has to be planned, and these papers or tests need to
be graded. I still fit in reading wherever I can,
and I treasure the times that I'm able to spend with good
books. Not so much the time spent with bad books, of
course, but I try to minimize that.
I
like to read because when I do read, I understand life and
living better. Authors tend to be great observers,
and what they share with us often gives us the chance to
see things from the outside and understand them from an
objective perspective rather than having to go through all
the trials that the characters experience. And with
that understanding I can move through life more strongly
and more confidently, dealing with things from a broader
perspective and a deeper understanding of human nature,
life, and the world I live in.
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