The Joy of Reading — and Writing!
Every person is affected by what they have “consumed” — in Sanskrit the word Sanskaar encapsulates this idea. In some way every interaction a person has, be it eating particular food, reading a book or watching a TV show, affects who they are and how they see the world. I feel the most lasting impact on one’s psyche is that of the written word. There are two reasons for this.
First, watching and listening can be done in a passive way; if your attention subconsciously shifts for half a minute you will have missed 30 seconds of content. However it is far more difficult to read something passively as you need to actively read to consume the written word. If your attention shifts whilst reading then you’ll usually stop reading!
Secondly, I feel when reading most people engage multiple senses for the same purpose. You see the words, and process them mentally. I believe most people use an inner voice to speak out the words when reading and thus hear them. This is why reading can be more difficult when someone is trying to talk to you as your attention for listening (and language processing) is diverted. Whilst it is true that watching something on TV requires both visual and auditory senses, they are split in what they are doing. The auditory side may be hearing the words, whilst the visual side may be looking at the physical details of the speaker, the setting, or the scenery.
This works both ways, a creator’s world view will come out in their creation, thus influencing the consumers of that creation.
I used to be a creator, an author, a problem solver. If something came up that I cared about I could quite easily take responsibility and write about or have an impact on the situation. I would enjoy the process of research and putting across some useful or entertaining information for others. However over time I have been edging towards more purely consumer type behaviours. My outlook is still mostly optimistic with a “can do” attitude; but when the opportunity arises to take action I’m often paralysed by options.
I recall an old saying about aging being the process of moving from optimism to pragmatism to cynicism. I’m probably somewhere between the first two, with occasional momentary lapses into the third. Most often if I see no hope in a situation it is after making sure that the result is out of my control; thus I do my best to not dwell on it. In a purely consumer mindset that deep dive into the situation would be skipped and it would just be seen as hopeless, or someone else’s fault or problem.
In trying to redress the balance, I was advised to start trying to identify inner contrarians (those voices inside saying “I can’t because…”) and for me they all boil down to some variation of “I don’t have enough time”. I don’t worry that I don’t know enough because I believe with research and investigation a solution can be found. But I wonder “do I have enough time to figure this out?”
This leads to the second barrier I come up against, the structure of my “free” time and deciding what to do with it. After spending a long day at work away from home, I want to spend time with the family and feel I should help around the house; my wife also works and I’m not old school enough to just leave it all to her! As such my “free” time comes in fits and starts, and I wonder what I could really accomplish in 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there. I could start looking at a project but then the dishwasher won’t get emptied until tomorrow or the ironing won’t get done until later. However, these routine tasks are unending and I probably just need to get away from the desire to get an immediate feeling of measurable “achievement” from each individual slot of time.
A final concern holding me back is the feeling that as an “amateur” I will not be able to contribute as well as a professional in a field. Yet again this is not a feeling of being inept or incapable but comes down to feeling like I can’t compare with someone working on a project full time when I am working on this in my spare time. This often leaves me in limbo unable to start any project.
Ultimately all this comes down to priority and planning. With a better plan for getting jobs done around the house I can help prioritise being creative. With a better plan for my creativity, when I do have an opportunity I will be better placed to take the next step in a project, and in the next opportunity the step after that, and so on.
For many months I have read the brilliant articles here on Medium and felt amazement at people able to set aside time to write inspiring and thought provoking content. Always feeling like “I could do that… if I had time”. But finally I hope to start being a creator and sharing more insights with the world.
