One of my greatest assets is that I’m a reader. If that sounds anti-climactic you’re probably not one yourself. If you’re not, I hope that this encourages you to become one.
I’ve been a reader ever since I can remember. It began with being read to and from there developed out of an obsession to get lost in “other worlds,” to become other people, to have adventures I could never have in my own walled-in life in South Africa, to do things I could not do and best of all, to be people I could never be.
Reading has opened my mind. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good, obviously, because now I’m open-minded. That is, I’m capable of empathizing with someone entirely unlike myself. However, this same open mindedness is also responsible for sometimes making it difficult to see things in black and white, good or bad. There are just so many in-betweens, so many reasons for why someone might choose to do something unsavory or hurtful, even though it might not technically be forgivable.
Being open-minded has one another small disadvantage: it has made me want to do many things, to be many people and to live many different lives. It’s something I have to reign in every single day.
“Candy, you can’t be a writer, a digital marketer, a programmer, an inventor, an archaeologist, a journalist and a jeweler, not if you want to do any one of those things REALLY well.” Though of course there are people out there with the ability to juggle as many tasks (I’m not there yet). I have to pick at this stage. To pick and to complete.
Strangely, this brings me full circle, back to advantages. One of the major advantages derived of reading is that it has made me creative. SO creative it sometimes hurts and I want to turn my brain off and tell it to stop. Stop coming up with ideas, stop connecting disparate things, keep quiet! Much as it does sometimes tire me, my ability to connect wildly different ideas and to continue finding solutions to problems is an invaluable asset, especially with regards to writing, creative advertising and jewelry design.
Reading is also one of the things that has allowed me to escape and to withdraw from depression. After all, when you take on someone else’s life (through a story), there’s no room left in your head for your own. This has got me through the loss and pain of immigration; through family problems; through relationship heartache, even loss of faith in myself and loneliness. In fact, as a treatment for loneliness I can prescribe nothing better than a good book—the equivalent of a friend.
I sometimes wonder how others (non-readers) deal with pain and loneliness. Is it worse? Does it last longer? Does it feel bigger? Beyond acting as a prescription for pain, the beautiful thing about a novel is that it can also give you a birds-eye-view of your own situation. It can put things into perspective, especially if you’re reading about characters who have suffered far more than you could ever even begin to imagine. At least I still have my family, my books and an insatiable appetite for experience and knowledge. And, on the flipside, if you’re in a not great situation yourself, you can take yourself out of it. If you’re paralyzed for example, a book can allow you to sky dive, to scuba dive, to run.
When it comes to the work I do now (mostly digital marketing) reading has once again stood by me. After all, how else would I have gleaned such an understanding of this industry? After all I do not have a degree in marketing or advertising, just an education in English and a weird side hobby that involves figuring out how to make my own websites and build an online presence. Thus, being a reader has made me a learner. I read because I enjoy it and because I read I learn. Because I read I am creative and because I am creative I hunger for knowledge that will give me even more fodder to connect ideas and to create.
Because I read I have learned SEO, content marketing, and web analytics. I have learned to understand the mindset of a wide range of different industries and I have progressed faster than those who began with the advantage of a marketing degree or even five years of industry experience. My only secret?Reading a lot.
Most importantly though, being a reader has made me a writer. Being a writer has fed me (literally), has opened the digital industry to me and has given me opportunities for the future. I can write books (fiction and non-fiction), I can maintain a blog that I can use to supplement job applications. I can convey my feelings to someone in another world. I can share who I am with people I have never met. Reading and writing are so inexplicably tied together that I’d go as far as to say you cannot be a good writer if you do not read. Reading teaches you to write, if subconsciously. It gives you a feel for words, an ear for rhythm and cadence, the ability to connect ideas and the ability to see a story where others might just see a disconnected sequence of events.
Yes, reading has done me well. It has made me empathetic, creative, hunger for knowledge (a learner), a writer and able to endure pain and depression. And it’s really all thanks to my mother who brought me up as a reader and who even now can consume three books in a day.
To those of you who think that non-fiction is the only way to learn, I feel nothing but pity. I have learned so much through novels—so much about myself, about others, about writing—that it’s impossible for me to even humor you. That said, I do read non-fiction and I read a lot of it. I learn from it too of course but in a different way, in an academic sense more than anything else, but of course also from a writer’s perspective.
If you’re still of the mindset that a novel cannot teach you anything, try reading fiction for a year and then come back to me and tell me otherwise.
