How Reading Changed My Life

I have a confession to make. I wasn’t the best of students in grade school. I was slow to learn how to read for whatever reason and because of this was held back a year in second grade.

When I was growing up, in the mid-sixties and seventies, this was something that could have a devastating effect on a young student and determine how a person’s intellectual, not to mention social status, was perceived by their peers, teachers, parents and friends. The power of early success or failure in school academics and sports is what hung many a young student’s later role in his social circle in precarious balance. Try as we may I don’t think we’ve moved too far from these notions and perceptions in the past fifty plus years in our public school system.

It wasn’t until something happened along about seventh grade that things begin to change for me. It was never a matter of my dislike for school, attention span or lack of an ability to absorb and learn. It may have had something to do with the fact that I’m more of a right brained, creatively visual learner than an inside the box, follow the crowd, type guy. I also think it had much to do with some of my teachers that weren’t so quick to give up on a kid that was a bit different than the rest. It’s a lesson that has stayed with me to this day. We celebrate diversity, except when it comes to how people learn and excel. Our public education system isn’t the best at identifying and handling the students that don’t tow a middle line in the learning spectrum.

For whatever reason I ended up an honor graduate out of high school and then it was off to the military where my education continued in many different ways. But that story is for another day. What I really want to explore is importance of one particular skill and its contribution to the continued opportunity to learn and grow throughout your life. This skill is the ability to read, comprehend and extrapolate meaning and concept from the written word. It’s what I originally struggled with, was able to overcome and it has been the fulcrum on which my personal education and desire to be a mentor is balanced.

If I could somehow magically give every person a special gift, it would be the gift to read and write well. To read is to expand one’s mind beyond the walls of social and physical limitation, to write is to put in one’s own words and share their personal understanding and relationship to the world around them. Reading and writing are the true gateway to freedom. Without it we would not be able to understand the importance that each of us holds in this world and the responsibility we have to care and nurture each other. The strength and power of the written word can never be taken for granted. It changes perceptions and people's lives every single day.

I’m very concerned about how younger people and everyone in general currently perceive the importance of the written word. Today, we write in shorthand, listen in shorthand, watch in shorthand and act in shorthand with much of the imagination going by the wayside. We are viewers not participants in a society that would rather let someone else do the thinking for them than exercise their right to personal  thought, opinion and action.

If you need an example you need not go any further than music videos, which became popular when I was in school. It used to be that a particular song would be a reminder of a certain time and events in a person’s life. When you heard it you would be transported to a moment in your life when the song was popular and it would act like an audible snapshot for your memory, taking you back to relive a point in time that has personal meaning and importance. When music videos came along they uprooted much of this by creating a link between another person's imagination and creativity and the song in question. Your imagination was replaced by the visual cues created by someone else. I know this might sound a bit trite, but in reality what it did is dumb down a person’s ability to imagine anything other than the strong visual imagery of someone else. We learn visually much faster than any other way, besides hearing, and we've been schooled in other people's corporate brand and marketing oh so very well.

When a person reads a book, whether it is a work of fiction or of fact, they are given the opportunity to mentally visualize and exercise their own unique imagination. Watch a video or a movie and it’s done for you. A percentage of personal enjoyment and creativity is missing.  Is it any wonder that people who enjoy reading find themselves disappointed when a favorite book is made into a movie? It’s not the same as they imagined, and imagination is what helps to satisfy our need to be personally creative.

Reading also helps to level the playing field when it comes to the perception of social, educational and cultural similarities and differences. My personal feeling is that a good book on a subject of personal interest will do more to excite a person’s desire to learn more about the world around them than watching something with the visual cues already established. Read a book and your curiosity is piqued. Watch a movie or program and your sense of having been there and done that is falsely established. Living life vicariously is a poor substitute for personal discovery and exploration.

Books don’t require any special set up or apparatus to enjoy. They are physical and engage a reader in a tactile way, where watching a video does not. The very act of turning a page, actually physically doing something, makes a book a better tool for learning than a video. The more senses a person engages while learning helps in the retention of ideas and concepts. Reading also improves the abstract and critical thinking that is necessary to creating ideas of one’s own.

So, where am I going with all this? I am encouraging you to read more, and to realize how important that reading is to  young and old alike. A book can transport a young person to worlds of imagination and reality that they would never otherwise conceive for themselves. A book can release an older person from the loneliness and isolation that physical limitations introduce. Read yourself, read to your children, volunteer as a reader in school, read to an elderly person whose eyesight may not allow them to any longer. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone. Your time, your voice, your companionship, combined with the strengthening of their imagination will not be forgotten. In essence you will be creating your own living legacy.

Now I’d like to share a personal example of how a book can be powerful enough to change a young person’s life. When I graduated from high school I was the recipient of an odd little award.  The official title of this award was “The I Dare You Award for Qualities Of Leadership”. This award came with the challenge to “Aspire nobly, Adventure daringly and Serve humbly.” It was accompanied by a book written by William H. Danforth, founder of the Ralston Purina Company. Written over eighty years ago, it is considered by many to be among the best self help books ever authored. You can still purchase it today from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Mr. Danforth helped launch the American Youth Foundation in 1925 as a resource for encouraging young people to become the best they can be in life. I believe it’s the first self help book I ever read. I haven’t stopped reading them since. It changed the way I began to understand my personal ability and responsibility to contributing to the well being of others.

If a book can change the way a young person thinks and acts for the rest of their life it is powerful indeed. If a book can change an adult’s life to be the best they can be for the rest of their life, that’s just as powerful. I encourage you to consider beginning your own library of books that will act as a personal inspiration to you. Here are a few suggestions:

The Power of Focus by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Les Hewitt

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander

The 360̊ Leader by John C. Maxwell

 Blink by Malcom Gladwell

 Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith

 Maximize Your Potential, (part of the 99U series), edited by Jocelyn K. Geli

 If you have a special book that has helped you in your personal growth please feel free to share it with me. I’d love to hear your opinion on the importance of reading along with your personal story of how reading and writing has affected your life.

  #michaelddavis

 "I simply write what I feel, because it matters to me. Hopefully some of it will resonate with and matter to you as well" - MDD