I have always enjoyed reading great novels, stories and poetry and then attempting to string words together to exercise my own feeble abilities at conveying great images. The best writers among us are originators. They have the ability to describe thoughts, people, places and moments with the eye of an artist. They manipulate phrases in unique ways to make statements that speak to every human who reads them. They are verbal dancers twisting and turning seemingly lighter than air itself. I love discovering the nuances of their ideas and being forever changed from the mere act of parsing the prose or poetry that they have set down in combinations and permutations of letters of the alphabet that transform into great thoughts. 

Thanks to my father, a collector of texts of every kind, and my high school English teacher who challenged me to read genres and authors unknown to me, I walk through bookstores noting the hundreds of books that I have read. Seeing them stacked on tables designed to capture the interest of novices who have yet to open their pages, is like encountering old friends. While I may not have been in touch with them lately, they live lovingly in corners of my heart. 

Reading is a sensual experience for me. I want to not only see the pages but also to feel them, to catch a scent of the paper and ink that that captures the essence of our shared human experience. For me it’s not just the bare bones of the story that seizes my attention, but the opportunity to meet and understand new people who leap from the pages. A great book has the power to transport me to other worlds, other universes inhabited by characters both perfect and frail. I want their stories to be fairy tales with happy ever afters while also knowing full well that reality is rarely like that. Nonetheless I love them so much that it crushes me when they fail. 

I find solace inside bookstores and libraries. When my anxieties are driving me to the brink I need only walk among the volumes demonstrating the glorious creativity of the human spirit. There is something soothing about the simple act of being surrounded by the multitude of compositions created by brilliant minds. Those texts unite me with authors who knew a different kind of world centuries ago but somehow shared the same longings that most of us feel today. The universality of our hopes and feelings helps me to realize that even in the darkest hours of my life I have never really been alone. The voices of the ages reach out to me to make me laugh or cry or simply learn. 

I truly believe that each of us should read more, not less. I celebrate the gift of literacy. The fact that I can read and write is no small treasure. It frees me from the bonds of ignorance. It makes me equal in possibilities with the richest and most powerful persons in the world. I am allowed to consider new ideas from people distanced from me by time and place, but not by thought. Reading truly is power. Being able to express my own ideas through writing is even more incredible. 

I have sometimes taken my freedom to read and write without restrictions for granted. I have lived in a time and place that has allowed me to seek knowledge unbound by censors. It has been an exhilerating experience, but of late I see that if I am not diligent things might change. I suppose that there have always been people who believe that we would be better served by policing ideas and topics that make them feel uncomfortable. They want to enforce taboos out of fear that there is something unhealthy about peering into descriptions of thoughts, places, actions, people who challenge the status quo. They fear that too much knowledge of controversial lifestyles and beliefs may infect our hearts and minds to the point of destroying our civilization. If they were better read they might realize that the opposite is true.

Stifling the human spirit, pretending that there should only be one way of thinking has always been the downfall of individuals, organization and nations. Dystopian novels are popular because we understand that humans with too much power and sway over the populace are the problem, not the differences that we inevitably have. Each of us should be able to choose the kind of existence that suits us best and reading provides us with unlimited examples from which to choose. 

There is much ado about nothing in schools these days. Concerned and no doubt loving parents want to monitor the content of lessons and the texts used to convey them. The problem is that all too often they insist on eliminating or banning books and theories that they do not personally like. Instead they would do well to prohibit only their own children, not the progeny of others who have been changed for the better by reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Things Fall Apart. I want those I love to have the same opportunities to browse freely through a library that I had. I am the person I am today because my parents and my teachers taught me to have an open mind, not one who is afraid to read or hear about the dark side of human nature. I have been able to navigate the tragedies of my own story because I have so intimately known the characters portrayed honestly in the books I have read. They prove to me that my personal trials are not unique. They provide me with courage.

My father read his newspaper in the morning before he left for work. He seemed to rarely be without his nose intently aimed inside a book. I saw the joy that he felt whenever he pointed to his collection of volumes that would not doubt have grown had he lived. I suppose that even in his death he left me one of the grandest lessons of all. He showed me the power and the joy of reading. It has served me so well.