Reading as an Act of Change

Yes, you already heard it many times. Maybe you already want to do it, but you have not found the time for it. Perhaps you simply do not like it, or maybe you prefer to watch videos or read AI summaries to get the information you need. Reading is something we have grown up with, an act we have been talked about but barely taught. Why do you need to read?

For starters, let’s take reading in its pure form. We are already reading all the time: we read words, images, gestures, positions. Reading in this case is the act of absorbing some sort of information and trying to make meaning out of it. However, to be able to read, you need to know the code used to represent meaning. For languages, it would be alphabets or characters. For images, colors might represent specific meanings. For gestures, you have to know which gestures mean something positive or negative and if they indicate a specific action or object. If you do not know the code well enough, the meaning might get lost and you would not get the message. 

Now, talking of reading as the act of looking and making meaning of text, we are also reading quite a lot, especially compared to our predecessors. We get exposed to texts everywhere we go (posters, books, Instagram posts, chats), and literacy has increased dramatically in the last couple of decades. We are usually expected to be able to read in this sense if we want to interact with the world around us. This is not bad either, but we will come back to this later.

Now, I want to talk about reading in the sense of taking a text (preferably a long one) and interacting with it. Not just scanning the content, and not just making meaning out of it, but questioning it, discussing it and generating new ideas from it. This type of reading requires more attention, more critical thinking, and more openness of mind. It needs more of you to give you more. It is the type of reading that goes beyond receiving a message. It is a type of reading that generates change.

In the age of information overload, it is no surprise that our brains cannot handle all the information we absorb daily. While taking breaks from this information overload is recommended in order to give our brain a space to process and recall information, I believe that the major problem here is that we are absorbing information superficially. Just think about the amount of reels or TikToks you might watch in the span of an hour: so many different topics, each one being discussed in less than 5 minutes, and then immediately switching to another topic. As Sead Džigal has put out, “abundance of information doesn’t guarantee understanding.”

Allow me here to briefly talk about your—and mine, too—role to be a “world changer.” If we are called to be different and to promote change for the well being of our communities, we must be able to understand what is happening in the first place. We should be able to read the situation (pun intended), digest it, discuss it, and come up with new ideas. However, if we are barely training such skills because we got accustomed to absorbing information but not understanding it, then we are likely not to generate change as we wish we could.

The solution seems obvious, but let me clarify something. I totally understand the feeling that comes with thinking about reading: feeling like only reading Shakespeare is valid, mature reading, and feeling pressured to read one book a week to be more intellectual. That is not the point that I am trying to make. Of course, I would encourage you to try, even once in your lifetime, to look at some classic writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jane Austen, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yet, my point is that you get to actually read, and by reading I mean getting to interact with what is in front of you.

It is not an easy task to consciously and carefully engage with a piece of text, whether it is a novel, an academic journal, or a blog. It takes a lot of patience and attention to read at such a level. While we are encouraged to do it for research purposes, to transfer those skills to your everyday life might perhaps be more beneficial than just applying it in an academic setting. The reason is that, if you can think and dialogue with the text, then you can see beyond what the text says on the surface, and you can obtain more insights of the core meaning of such text. In other words, you get the actual good stuff if you do it the proper way—in the same way you might enjoy your fries better if you eat them slowly, tasting every bite of it, instead of bolting them. 

Besides, in a period of time where every company and institution is fighting for your attention, having the capacity to choose what you pay attention to and engage with is a superpower. Reading in an engaging way is liberating, frees you from only following the waves (whether it harms you or not), and helps you become the change that the world so desperately needs. If you can develop it, do it. Reading in this age is an act of courage. Reading is an act of change.