Reading – Reality vs Expectation
Some of you are readers and some are not. It is not something everyone is interested in, and I respect that. But recently I talked to some of my friends out there who are not readers but are interested in reading. I suggested my, “How You Can Start Reading” post to them. Just to understand what they thought about reading I asked them, what do they think will happen if they read, and the things that they said were………………..unbelievable. There were some really peculiar myths that they believed in. Here are some of them:
1) Intelligence:
Expectations-
Most of them thought that if you start reading you will become some kind of super-intelligent genius / mad scientist. Now, I know that most of you believe this to be untrue but still, I would like to clear it up for the remaining few.
Reality-
Reading does enhance your knowledge in many different topics and enables you to talk to people on many different topics. This is a very desirable quality but it doesn’t make you a genius.
2) Read books, instead of TV:
Expectations-
All of us know the classic TV vs books battle. Many parents force their kids into reading books instead of TV because they believe that it will make their kids smarter/ won’t cause as much damage to their kids’ health as TV will. This is understandable, but it is not like reading cannot be distractive.
Reality-
There was once a period in my life when I was addicted to reading. My parents felt good that I was reading books but after some time it started turning out as a problem. Due to reading, my social life which was already suffering started shrinking even more. I used to spend whole nights without sleeping if I was really interested in a book. This caused me to get glasses and it significantly damaged my eyesight. By the time I got in 6th grade and got a hold on this habit, the damage was done and my eyesight had gotten very bad as compared to that of my peers. I was always hunched upon a book and many friends that I had gained were slowly starting to slip away. That’s when I decided to put a stop to reading as addiction and start it as a hobby.
3) Reading is Anime:
Expectations-
Many people think that if you want to become a true reader you need to do the following things:
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1. Complete a book in one sitting without breaks
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2. Own a huge library at your home
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3. Have hundreds of books with you
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4. Have a membership at a library
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5. Read so many books that you don’t remember the number
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6. Read so fast that your eyes start burning out
Well maybe all of them except the 6th one, I know that it’s a little too much.
Reality-
These are the things that readers actually do:
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1. Read a book
That’s right, all you need to do is read a book. You can own that book or borrow it from someone, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you read and complete a book. It also doesn’t mean that you read all books that you get a hand on. Most of the readers including me, stick to their favoured genres. You won’t see me reading autobiographies or biographies. Of course, I have read some classics like Steve Jobs and Messi but not many. I read genres like fiction, fantasy, mythology, mystery and sometimes even science. It all depends on your choices and each reading community in the whole world will respect that.
So, hope you guys liked this post. I have decided to decrease the quantity and increase the quality of my posts. Now the ratio of the post will be one each week. I found myself writing the blog just for the sake of it without putting my heart and mind into it. If you agree to this please comment down below and also if you want to see the second part of reality vs expectations, put that down below too. And with that note, this is me, signing off until next week! Bye!
