Reading is a Gift That Keeps on Giving

 

            I had a wise friend who railed at the advent of the computer.  She was a professor at a Colorado university, and with all her might and intellectual prowess she fought the effect that the computer would have on academics in America. Investigate her point of view:  She was critical of the limitations that technology would place on learning.  Every time I use a spell-checker or the thesaurus on my word-processing program, I think of her criticism. 

The words we use now are more or less contained in a digest version of Roget's Thesaurus, and Spell-checker, and these helpers will, every now and then, report that a word we wish to use "is not in the dictionary."   Well, yes it is, but the abridged version of the dictionary or thesaurus just doesn't know that word. This is not your error, it is a limit placed on your language usage. The diligent writer may take the time to look further for the more perfect word or phrase, but our students and our busiest citizens probably don't take the time.  It doesn't seem that important.. 

The computer isn't entirely to blame. Newer versions of many dictionaries have eliminated certain “archaic” word choices.  At all avenues we are encouraged to restrict our language to its comfortable, modern choices.  Please understand, I love the computer, but  it symbolizes a trend leading us into the mindset of those who prefer digests, abridgements and summaries.  The computer has fascinated us with its games, its groupie groups, its uncensored sites and its great ability to entertain, and it is inevitable that it will eat into the time that the average person spends reading a book, a Kindle, a Nook or searching for more hidden academic treasures.  Such searches require time and access to more unlimited sources of information.

  I’m a fussy old lady and I worry; how can we truly appreciate the following quotation from Thoreau if we don’t know that fane means temple or shrine:

 If we have thus desecrated ourselves--as who has not?--the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to deconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities."                                                                                                                 -                   -Thoreau, “Life Without Principle”                                            

 At another place, in Walden,he encouraged his reader to "stand on tip-toe to read."

             I remember getting my first library card and going to the library when I was seven or eight.   All those books!  I was at sea.  Logically, however, I decided to start at the beginning of the row, and came upon Alcott, Louisa May.  I began to read Little Women, then Little Men, Joe's Boy's and so on.    I loved the Marches and I began to see myself in Jo March.  I even fixed up part of our attic with a cozy chair, table and lamp. Wisely, I succeeded in doing two important things for a child:  Getting a spot to be by myself and learning to choose what I read. 

            In the summer, I went from the attic to the top limb of a cherry tree in our back yard.  I would fill a wooden apple box with books and take them up into the tree.  With my loot I would hide out from a mother who would have preferred to have help with the dishes.  I have always preferred books to housework.  Hooray!

            I am a firm believer in at least four years of a liberal education, although only half of my family agrees with me.  At Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin I found the building blocks of my Self.   I met Thoreau, Plato, Aristotle, John Stuart Mills, Shakespeare, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Professor Brown in the Biology department, Professor Brooks in the Art Department and so many others. This is also where I learned humility; I discovered that I had only had a sip of the intoxicating task of discovering what knowledge is and what it could do for me.

            Much later, I fell in love with the poetic – with Dickinson, Frost, Sandburg, Rumi, Hafiz and some of the contemporary poets who are so insightful; the task of enlightenment never ends.  The joy of learning is just as deep today, now that I am elderly, as it was that first day when I stood on tip-toe, reached up and took Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy into my heart.   I wish I could bottle the love of reading and learning.